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It has been proposed that both feeds and entries may be permitted sub-titles, to go hand in hand with titles. In the various example feeds, subtitle had a lot of varying uses. It was being used as the subtitle for feeds as a whole: "Ain't the Interweb great?" It was being used as a summary for entries: "In which a newbie learns to blog..." (which largely duplicates the summary element from the same example: "A very boring entry; just learning how to blog here..."). In ProgramlistingExampleFeed, it was used to indicate the kind of feed. It's pretty clearly semantically slippery.
Subtitle Arguments
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These arguments were moved from EchoExample and BiblioGraphy and refactored. If subtitle is desirable, please post an explanation before adding it back in. There could easily be something GaryF, AsbjornUlsberg, and BryantDurrell missed.
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[GaryF] As "others have said", the subtitle element is both confusing and unnecesary. The feed-level subtitle doesn't seem worthwhile at all, while the entry level subtitle should be, at best, optional. Including it as a required element would result in a lot of tools being unable to generate Echo feeds. I don't think it's necessary (or particularly useful), and since it will be considered a core part of the spec it should be removed.
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[ArveBersvendsen] I wasn't the one who added it, but the ProgramlistingExampleFeed uses it.
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[GaryF] It seems it uses it unnecessarily (although I don't speak the language the example is in). I still think it should be ok to remove it from the example feed.
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[ArveBersvendsen] The title element is the name of the radio station (NRK Petre), while the subtitle indicates what kind of feed it is (Programoversikt = Program listing). In this case, the organization offers several different mp3 casts, and the subtitle could just as well have been "Programoversikt, 128kbps mp3".
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[GaryF] That could all be in the title. A unique meaningful title for every page is generally considered good form, rather than having a generic title and then using lower-level titles (headers in HTML) to be more specific.
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[PhilWolff] Many weblog systems use both a site title and subtitle. The title serves as a short, memorable nickname ("The New York Times"). The subtitle provides a phrase for context ("All The News Fit To Print"). So it makes sense to me to preserve subtitle at the feed level. Make it mandatory for software to support, optional for authors to include.
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[ZhangYining] +1 RSS(1.0/2.0/0.91) have both <title> and <description> under <channel>, many weblogs use <description> as subtitle or a descriptive statement of what they are about. having <subtitle> satisfies such requirement and also portability.
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[BryantDurrell] <description> is much better than <subtitle> here. We should call things what they are. If we need a <description> element under channel, we should put one in instead of adding ambiguity by encouraging people to use <subtitle> as a description. EchoFeed includes a <description> element, although EchoExample does not -- it might be a good idea to discuss the explict inclusion of <description> somewhere in that region of the wiki. I think that <description> or the equivalent is important to include.
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[ZhangYining] Subtitle is more general, many weblog subtitles are used to state bloggers' motto, or the subjects they usually blog about, or other statements they like or feel cool; Anyway, it's just about naming, the point is we need another element, just for convention, common practice, or legacy. Secondly, it shouldn't be a big effort to parse an extra plain text element.
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[GaryF] At feed level we should stick with prior art: either <description> or <summary>. That's one of the reasons subtitle was pulled: it's not used widely (despite what some are saying about widespread support in blogging tools). A simple description is available in almost every tool I can think of.
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[PhilWolff] We should include item level subtitles. Headline writing is capricious at best. Will you understand what "Say it ain't Sosa!" means if you're not from the U.S.? A subhead (a deck) is the short, optional phrase that clarifies/modifies the headline ("Baseball commissioner suspends and probes home-run great for rigged bat."). Make it mandatory for software to support, optional for authors to include.
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[ZhangYining] can we use <summary> to mean <subtitle>? if so, we can drop <subtitle> under <item>.
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[BryantDurrell] I wouldn't understand the title of a French newspaper article -- but that doesn't mean that all titles should be translated into English. Every feed will have a target audience, and sometimes the choices made in order to please that target audience will complicate matters for others. But that's not a bad thing. I'm also against any change which complicates life for aggregator authors. Better to be able to hand 'em a feed and say "this is akin to this, that's akin to that, and there's nothing new to complicate your interface."
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[AdamRice] Call it a summary, subtitle, description, or abstract, I don't care, but it should be mandatory to recognize and optional to include. Should apply at both the feed and entry levels. If nothing else, this is simply supporting features already in use by blogging systems--and !Echo should not force its users to give up existing features, at the very least: Radio and MovableType both have blog-level subtitles. MovableType has entry-level summaries. (I think other blogging systems do too.) IMHO these are structurally equivalent. Non-English scientific papers often include abstracts in the native language and English, and with that in mind I also suggest that multiple abstracts (in multiple languages) should be supported.
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+1 [BryantDurrell] I'm all in favor of including an element for a summary/abstract; as you point out, that concept is supported in current blogging software.
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+1 [GaryF] I'm all for providing a <description> or <summary> at the item level as well. But the previous examples had that AND a <subtitle> which was just redundant. That's why I wanted them pulled from the item level. I think either a <description> or <summary> is an important part of an entry. But we didn't need both.
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+1 [AsbjornUlsberg, RefactorOk] I'm all with AdamRice here. Yay, yay.
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[AdamRice] I think you are right, Jon Udell's cogent article notwithstanding. I suspect that if a blogging tool came along that supported heads/decks/leads, most bloggers would be mystified and misuse them half the time. Presumably, if the need arises, it will be addressed through !Echo 2 or through the ComponentBlog approach.
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[GaryF] I think we have consensus on leaving subtitle out, but keeping a summary of some sort in. Good!
title element with rel attribute
It's been suggested that the title element should have a "rel" attribute to define what it is, and that multiple title attributes should be permitted. "If you don't provide a 'rel' attribute, it defaults to 'main-title' or something." A list of acceptable values is probably needed in this case.
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[GaryF] I'm unsure about this idea. If the values of rel are defined, then it's fine; parsers will understand each possibility. But if left to contextualise all possible values, then the value becomes useless to most. Maybe come up with a list of acceptable values?
[AsbjornUlsberg, RefactorOk] It's of course necessary to provide a list of legal attribute values in this case, as it is in any case. We need to define values for link-rels, date-rels, contributor-rels and title-rels, if we decide to have them. The point of having rel-attributes instead of different elements is that the format looks tighter and cleaner, and it is also much easier to extend the attribute-values than to add additional elements to the standard.
Misc
Heads, decks, and leads appear to mean titles, subtitles, and summaries as described by Jon Udell
subtitle elements existed on the following example pages:
Other misc former references:
A related concept would be that of a SeriesTitle -- where a group of posts is issued as part of a series. Example series would be "30 days to more accessible weblogs", "my Buffy marathon", "continuing reports from the [whichever] conference". At this time these series titles usually appear conflated with the post title, or maybe on the rare occassion a distinct and new category is created for the series. In either case, a shoehorning of concepts. It is quite conceivable that a post may have a SeriesTitle, a post title, and a SubTitle.