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RSS Version 3 Specs Up for Review
Jonathan Avidan writes "The RSS 3 Homepage now offers its first publicly available specification, the RSS 3 Lite-type Specification First Draft, intended for review and commenting for revision. RSS 3 is a reworking of RSS 2.0, filling the gaps and removing unnecessary features and is fully backwards-compatible, rather than a new format."
... plans are afoot for Microsoft to co-opt RSS and rename it "web feeds"[from El Reg, so take it with a pinch of snuff]. Now, that is a better name, but it wouldn't be the first time that some incompatible variations got added to an open standard during this process (*cough* Kerberos).
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
that this happens on the day after the IETF announces that it's approved the ATOM syndication format?
o mpub-format-11.txt
Announcement reproduced below:
The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'The Atom Syndication Format' as a Proposed Standard
This document is the product of the Atom Publishing Format and Protocol Working Group.
The IESG contact persons are Scott Hollenbeck and Ted Hardie.
A URL of this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-at
Technical Summary:
This document describes the Atom format for syndication. It is XML-based and is considered to be the successor to the earlier RSS formats. Its primary use is for web-based content, but is expected to be used for non-web content as well, such as personal news feeds.
Working Group Summary:
Some members of the working group remain unenthusiastic about some sections of the document, but the chairs strongly believe that there is rough (or better) consensus in support of the document as a whole.
For some of the parts with the most contention, there cannot be more than very rough consensus due to basic differences in the way people would design parts of the format, particularly given that we have many models in existence with the different flavors of RSS. For some parts of the document, there is contention about whether or not a particular item should or should not be in the Atom core versus being an extension. For some parts, there is contention whether there should be MUST/SHOULD/MAY leeway for content creators in the presence or absence of an element, or the semantic content of an element; the
group really pushed RFC 2119 around during the past few months.
Protocol Quality
Scott Hollenbeck and the XML Directorate have reviewed the specification for the IESG. Test implementations have confirmed basic protocol soundness.
I get the feeling that this is a practical joke/troll by Jonathan Avidan - the person who is editing this new specification, the person who maintains the website linked to, and who submitted this article to Slashdot.
Yeah, the RSS 2 specification could do with cleaning up and clarification. No, it's not feasible because of too many people doing stupid things like announcing new versions of RSS all on their own and fragmenting the community.
From the FAQ:
Follow the link. It's a new message board with no posts.
There is zero community behind this "standard", it's just a spec some guy decided to write of his own accord. In contrast, a real community effort, Atom, has just reached 1.0 and is standardized by the IETF. Nobody should take this "RSS 3.0" seriously.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha