Subject: Re: Re: Don't bake discrimination into the Atom core (was Re: Low-hanging fruit: multipart/alternative)

From: Kevin Marks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 02:58:37 -0700

On Tue, 31 Aug 2004 16:32:14 -0400, Mark Pilgrim <[email-masked]> wrote:
> No, I'm pointing out that your "position" has nothing to do with the
> topic at hand.  We're not going to solve the delta-HTTP problem today.
>  (There's an RFC for that somewhere.  BillK will find it.)
> 

RFC 3299

blogged here: http://epeus.blogspot.com/2002_01_01_epeus_archive.html#8864593
and here: http://epeus.blogspot.com/2003_12_01_epeus_archive.html#107092115200986665

---

From: Ziv Caspi <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2004 00:36:50 +0200

Mark Pilgrim said:

> It's not granular enough.  Atom entries can currently contain multiple
> content elements (regardless of multipart/alternative).  Accessibility
> requires a way to say that *this* is an accessible alternative to
> *that*.  Entry-level alternate representations are not granular enough
> if each entry can contain multiple distinct pieces of content.  You
> need content-level alternates.

I don't understand why deeper-level alternates is required (or even
desirable) for accessibility. People already publish several versions of
their feeds (RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom, short description, full description,
etc.) Isn't "feed-level alternates" (providing two feeds -- an accessible
feed and a non-accessible feed) a simpler solution that works?

Ziv Caspi
  cell: +972-53-668-751
    web: http://radio.weblogs.com/0106548/

---

From: Isofarro <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2004 14:27:05 +0100

Ziv Caspi wrote:
> I don't understand why deeper-level alternates is required 
> (or even desirable) for accessibility. People already publish
> several versions of their feeds (RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom,
> short description, full description, etc.) Isn't "feed-level
> alternates" (providing two feeds -- an accessible feed and a
> non-accessible feed) a simpler solution that works?

On the aspect of accessibility, providing an inaccessible
version of a resource and an accessible version of a resource
tends to result in the situation that the accessible version
falls behind in terms of updates.

I don't believe mandating two separate feeds is a good idea - it
leads to an apartheid situation (or ghetto) which is IMO
socially unacceptable. Matt May makes a good point:

*
<url:http://www.bestkungfu.com/archive/date/2004/06/on-separate-but-equal-design/>
*
<url:http://www.accessify.com/archives/2004_06_20_news-archives.asp#108789829699055748>

Development wise, once someone has a feed that produces what
they want - what incentive is there to create a second feed to
meet accessibility requirements?

It would require less work to ensure the main feed is accessible
- so when inaccessible media is referenced, the mechnaism to
refer/point/incorporate an alternative accessible form needs to
be present.

Mike.