Wikipedia:
A creole language, or just creole, is a well-defined and stable
language that originated from a non-trivial combination of two or
more languages, typically with many distinctive features that are
not inherited from either parent. All creole languages evolved from
pidgins, usually those that have become the native language of some
community.
This is unabashedly a Fat Tuesday metaphor that may only make
sense to the author, namely me. But then again, isn’t
that what weblogs are for, after all?
Taking a look at
this RSS 2.0
feed that was produced by the Microsoft IE7 subscribe process,
I am struck by the fact that it is undeniably a
pidgin and to
my eye, quite ugly. It starts with many elements from
Netscape’s Rich Site Summary, which in turn borrows an
element or two from Dave Winer’s now defunct
ScriptingNews
format. It also includes elements from the newer
Atom format, and even
another two from a Microsoft Extension.
Wordpress RSS 2.0 feeds
include the full markup of the content in the post by borrowing an
extension
from RDF Site Summary.
DasBlog RSS 2.0 feeds describe content by borrowing an element
from xhtml.
I’m reminded of
this
quote from Douglas Adams, parts of which are attributed to
Stephen Pinker:
... They manage to cobble together a rough and ready lingo made
up of bits of each. It lets them get on with things, but has almost
no grammatical structure at all.
However, the first generation of children born to the community
takes these fractured lumps of language and transforms them into
something new, with a rich and organic grammar and vocabulary,
which is what we call a Creole. Grammar is just a natural function
of children’s brains, and they apply it to whatever they
find.
The same thing is happening in communication
technology...
Huh, well that would be unfortunate as it seems like it’d be terribly useful for, say, feeds of the application/atom+xml variety that seem to insist on never being displayed within a browser under any conditions.
Yeah, it’s already gone in IE7b2-preview: you just get to watch the throbber continue to spin, while it tells you that “The address is not valid.”
The plan so far for Firefox 2 is that we’ll munge up your view of a feed URL, mostly push you to subscribe in whatever you’ve told us is your choice of aggregator with maybe a very abbreviated HTMLization of the feed content, but with unimpeded View -> Source and view-source both. Now that I’m reminded of it, I’ll keep an eye on the second, since I already planned on throwing myself in the road if the first was threatened. (Personally, I prefer the way it is now, since I told Firefox to always open Atom/RSS in my favorite editor, where I usually want it anyway, but I’m told we mustn’t scare the citizens with angle brackets.)
Library clips :: Ways to make Reading Lists so far :: February :: 2006 (tags: rss opml) Sam Ruby: Tasty Creole on a Fat Tuesday Morning (tags: rss atom) Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » Google at SES NYC 2006 (tags: google search seo)...
Hey, thanks a lot :) I’m the author of this prime example. I’m happy to see that it’s worth something that I check the feed with feedvalidator after every change.
"a prime example of fine German Engineering" wurde der von mir erstellte Atom-Feed der Seite Atemschutzunfälle.de von niemand geringerem als Sam Ruby diesem Posting in seinem Blog genannt. RTFM und die Benutzung des Feedvalidators haben also auc...
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