Ghosts of RSS past
To explore the future, one needs to understand the past.
In the beginning, items in RSS 0.90 had only titles and links. Items in today's RSS feed for scripting.com has neither. Where's the continuity in that?
The answer to this question is that RSS 2.0's primary author, Dave Winer, has consistently demonstrated that he fundamentally understands that data outlives code. Not be a little, but by a lot. And not sometimes, but always.
Case in point: consider that while scripting.com's RSS feed has neither a title nor a link, every aggregator out there supports both title and link. And will for the foreseeable future.
Why guid instead of link? It turns out that link has been used rather ambiguously over time. In some feeds the link points to the article the item discusses. On others it points to the item itself. Which is right?
There are plenty of other areas of ambiguity. Can description contain HTML? If it can contain HTML, can any hypertext links contained therein be relative? If they can be relative, what should they be relative too?
How do you correct "bad" link tags and descriptions? You don't. They will exist forever. The best you can do is to provide a more constrained, predictable, and reliable alternative.
I propose that hypertext links inside of xhtml:body can be relative. And that they are be evaluated relative to the URL of the RSS feed itself (as opposed to, say, the value of the /rss/channel/link element). Towards that end, I'm hereby publicly challenging Don Box to work with me to help formally document the usage of the xhtml:body element in the context of an RSS 2.0 feed. Others that wish to participate are, of course, welcome to do so
See my blog. I accept.
As for relative URI, we should just endorse current practice.
Since we're using XML, I suggest we defer to XML Base.
Posted by Don Box atI would suggest that inserting XHTML into RSS is a non-solution to a non-problem.
Personally I don't think using RSS for full-content delivery is such a good idea. Why reinvent the browser and delivery systems (badly)?
The meaning of the markup is also pretty questionable - Bunging one kind of XML into another and hoping for the best may work in the RSS+XHTML case, but I doubt whether this approach likely to take much reuse. I've rambled on about this a bit more here:
http://dannyayers.com/archives/001154.html#001154
Posted by Danny atI'd agree somewhat on not including full content in an RSS feed, except that very few bloggers have the ability for providing a URL for the non-templated content in their RSS items.
That'd be a place to start, though.
Posted by Ken MacLeod atI'm in the "resolve relative to the link" camp. Sam, why do you think relative to the feed is better? I look at RSS as something derived from the "real" blog entry on my web site, in which case a blog which uses URLs like http://example.com/blog/rss2 and http://example.com/blog/entry/42 would have to rewrite the relative URLs when generating RSS; but I realise there are no doubt equally good reasons for feed-relative to be useful.
I was going to propose use of the xhtml:base element to unambiguously specify how relative URLs should be resolved, but I can't decide if I'm being serious or facetious.
Posted by Adam Fitzpatrick atSome people like full content in RSS feeds. Current thinking is to put an excerpt in the description element, and put the complete text in xhtml:body (or content:encoded) if you want to provide both.
Posted by Greg Reinacker at
Others agree about the full-content thing...see this post from Don's weblog.
Posted by Greg Reinacker at
RSS fixins'
Tim Bray, RSS Needs Fixing: Because, boys and girls, RSS is no longer a science experiment, it's becoming an important part of the infrastructure, which means that a lot of programmmers are going to get the assignment of generating and parsing it,...Excerpt from Blogging Roller at
The past, present, and future of RSS
Sam writes some article/blog entries on RSS: The Future of RSS, Ghosts of RSS Past, RSS: it's not just for... [more]Trackback from techno weenie at
RSS 2.0
Sam has a whole pile of entries on RSS 2.0, which I fully support. Dave Winer is worried about breaking existing clients, but I think that we still have only seen a fraction of the RSS use that we are going to see. Breaking RSS on last... [more]Trackback from Ted Leung on the air at
Kudos to all of you (Dave, Sam, Don, Greg, Mark, et al) for putting so much effort into generating a spec that can be used by the masses. I'd like to raise the bar a little further and suggest we take advantage of the great momentum in the community and establish not just a spec for RSS 2.0 + xhtml, but possibly a collaborative site (www.rssdev.org, for example) to serve as the one definitive starting point for RSS developers to glean their info about all things RSS. I would be willing to donate the domain registration fee, perhaps someone else would donate server space and bandwidth... Right now, to follow the growth and development of RSS, one has to jump from blog to blog. That's fine for a select few who know what blogs to watch, but it just plain sucks for the masses. As RSS grows up, i think those of us that want to see it succeed should spend a little time on the mundane tasks of organizing an informal community/working group. Maybe I'm way off on this, but any project needs some management to be successful in the long run.
Posted by Christian Romney at
Let me register my vote for the need to include full content in feeds -
have you ever tried reading an RSS feed containing just title and link on a plane?
(And yes, I do know about the various trials of experimental WiFi connectivity on planes, but it's not going to be on UA-87 by tomorrow!)
Including full item content in the feed was the major leap forward RSS 0.91+ made over earlier efforts such as CDF, IMHO.
- Jorgen
Posted by Jorgen Thelin atMore on xhtml in RSS
Sam Ruby: Ghosts of RSS past There certainly seems to be demand for full content in feeds, so I guess... [more]Trackback from Raw Blog at
Distributed RSS Discussion
There’s an interesting distributed discusson on RSS’s past, problems, and possible future going on, includng a concrete proposal for how to move RSS 2.0 to a fully-embeddable namespace-protected format.... [more]Trackback from Mt. Molelog at
I'm sure this is a profoundly stupid question, but why can't "RSS-NG" be based on a profile of XHTML with some conventions as to how to represent RSS semantics with HTML syntax.
That would address essentially all of Tim Bray's points, leverage lots of the HTML infrastructure, make syndicating a simple matter of picking out the HTML markup that met the convention (perhaps those with some predefined set of class attributes, which stylesheets could also key off ... In other words, it could be just as machine processable and much more easily authored, with no ****brained escaping.
Instead of:
<rss version="0.91">
<channel>
<title>Gen. Jack D. Ripper</title>
<link>http://wherever</link>
<description>Preserving our Precious Bodily Fluids</description>
<lastBuildDate>Monday, March 31, 2003 5:42:56 PM</lastBuildDate>
<language>en-us</language>
<item>
<title>Impeach Merkin Muffley</title>
<link></link>
<description><a href="<a href="http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/666666666.htm">He's">http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/666666666.htm">He's</a> a commie-loving rat.</a>.<br /></description>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
Why not something like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>General Ripper's Weblog</title>
</head>
<body>
<div class="channel" lang="en-us">
<a class="link" href="http://www.example.com/PurityOfEssence"></a>
<p class="description">Preserving our Precious Bodily Fluids
<div class="item">
<p class="description"><a class="title" href="http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/666666666.htm">Impeach Muffley</a>
He's a commie-loving rat
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
What am I missing here?
Posted by Mike Champion atRSS 2.0
Sam has a whole pile of entries on RSS 2.0, which I fully support. Dave Winer is worried about breaking existing clients, but I think that we still have only seen a fraction of the RSS use that we are going to see. Breaking RSS on last time now is...Excerpt from Ted Leung on the air at
The Future of RSS
Sam Ruby has been pouring out thoughts on RSS today: RSS Namespace Proposal RSS: It's Not Just for Syndication Anymore Ghosts of RSS Past These entries read either as an essay that looks like a series of posts or a series of posts that look like an...Excerpt from Matt Croydon::postneo at
Hi Mike,
What I think you are missing is the composibility and extensibility of XML namespaces.
For example, you could not combine the Dublin Core elements (such as described in mod_dublincore) with Event module (mod_event) as there is a clash on the name 'type' - and dc:type may not have exactly the same semantic meaning as ev:type for instance.
See:
http://dmoz.org/Reference/Libraries/Library_and_Information_Science/Technical_Services/Cataloguing/Metadata/RDF/Applications/RSS/Specifications/RSS1.0_Modules/
for examples of these data formats.
What you are proposing only really has a single namespace, which will lead to clashes sooner or later.
- Jorgen
Posted by Jorgen Thelin atshorts
Sam has a bunch of thoughts on RSS. Apparently its my fault that Dave pulled namespaces from RSS 2.0, so I apologize for that. All I really wanted was for Dave to not treat every paying Radio customer as his personal test bed.Joe says some... [more]
Trackback from Simon Fell > Its just code at
I have a couple of points in this comment:
I'm all for a formal spec for xhtml:body in RSS. A description should be just that a DESCRIPTION of what a link points to. In general this should be an article (MSDN RSS feeds ironically reflects this perfectly), but in the world of webblogs descriptions primarily seem out-of-place.
People like to put whole "posts" in RSS. The current practice of html in the description element is sloppy and error prone. The orignal content:encoded was far-reaching and insanely complicated while the current version leaves A LOT to be desired. Technically you can place anything in content:encoded but people only put html fragments and there's no MIME type to express this.
Lastly, RSS Aggetators have taken all the spotlight lately and other forms of syndication have been forgotten. What about the syndirection of another type; taking headlines from someone elses page and placing them in yours. Say you have a site dedicated to .Net coding. You may want to have the lasted posts from MSDN or some other coding site. Having a clear separation between a DESCRIPTION and CONTENT is necessary in sitautions as such and having a text only description helps considerbly. If it has a description display it if it dosen't don't. No added parsing necessary.
Posted by Jonathan Porter atIf RSS 2.0 items were more embeddable
Sam Ruby: Ghosts of RSS past... Why embed XHTML into RSS when we can embed RSS into XHTML?... [more]Trackback from snellspace at
In brief: insomniac edition
A little of everything. I mean, why not? I'm up anyway.... [more]Trackback from dive into mark at
Getting the RSS 2.0 namespace right
Last time we discussed a namespace for RSS 2.0, I got it wrong, proposing the right thing to do as my third proposal and bad-mouthing it. This time, I'd like to see it done right....Excerpt from phil ringnalda dot com at
RSS on the move
RSS on the move: Just as I am preparing my RSS presentation, things start moving on the RSS front. I like that - because it means I can add some "last minute" information to the presentation. Nothing worse than a stale ...Pingback from Matthew Langham's Radio Weblog: Mittwoch, 23. April 2003 at
Sam Ruby -Why we should iterate the RSS format to use optional namespaces
Sam kicks butt in these posts (we're lucky to have his analytical clarity in the blogging community): Ghosts of RSS past RSS: it's not just for syndication anymore RSS namespace proposal <quote> Summary: At a minimum, I'd like to see an...Excerpt from Roland Tanglao's Weblog at
Sam Ruby’s last few posts about RSS past and ...
Sam Ruby’s last few posts about RSS past and future help to explain why it needs namespaces (or some other change), which helped clear my previous confusion. Future apps. That makes sense (but for weblog aggregation? I'd still argue against a...Excerpt from phil.wilson - a geek commodity at
Sam Ruby: Ghosts of RSS past
The best you can do is to provide a more constrained, predictable, and reliable alternative....Excerpt from paranoidfish.org/links at
don't mean to be pushy but don got me psyched with his you'll-have-the-doc-in-24-hours proclamation. did i miss it or have don or sam been busy? ;-)
Posted by Christian Romney at
In brief: 26th April 2003
RSS galore: what's in the future of RSS? Mark Nottingham is trying this: an Internet Draft of RSS 2.0. In the meantime, Sam Ruby elaborates: RSS Namespace Proposal, RSS: It's just not for syndication anymore, Ghosts of RSS past, Future of RSS. Then,...Excerpt from Through the Blogging-glass at
Sam Ruby -Why we should iterate the RSS format to use optional namespaces
Sam kicks butt in these posts (we're lucky to have his analytical clarity in the blogging community): Ghosts of RSS past RSS: it's not just for syndication anymore RSS namespace proposal <quote> Summary: At a minimum, I'd like to see an...Excerpt from Roland Tanglao: XML at
Sam Ruby -Why we should iterate the RSS format to use optional namespaces
Sam kicks butt in these posts (we're lucky to have his analytical clarity in the blogging community): Ghosts of RSS past RSS: it's not just for syndication anymore RSS namespace proposal... [more]Trackback from Roland Tanglao's Weblog at
Regarding the relative links in xhtml:body...I would hesitate to use something like that, because it makes the item useless outside the context of a particular feed. So, for example, if I were to extract a RSS item from a feed, and stick it into another feed (ignore for the moment whether you should do this - it's being done today in many places), the links would then be invalid.
While the requirement for absolute links is inconvenient, it at least enforces that a RSS item can stand on its own.
Posted by Greg Reinacker at