Subject: summary or content

From: Robert Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:27:36 -0500

Note: the editors were instructed to "highlight a couple sentences in 
the draft" because this WG didn't notice the broken example that's been 
there the whole time. Actually, I vaguely remember one person mentioning 
it a long time ago, but I may have been talking to myself as I was 
working on the draft and then forgotten to make the edit.

In any case, it's my opinion that it hurts interop because people start 
sticking cruft in there to meet the requirement. Remember Anil Dash's 
linkblog and RSS Bandit? Also, which existing syndication formats have a 
similar requirement? RFC2822 doesn't require a body either, btw. Also, 
there's linkblogs in general, and stuff like Bill's HTTPLR.

Robert Sayre

>    [[anchor4: Ask yourself: is the example atom:entry valid?]]
> 
> No, it's not, because there's no <summary> or <content>; so fix it

> 
>    o  atom:entry elements MUST contain an atom:summary element in any of
>       the following cases: [[anchor26: Do these requirements reflect the
>       WG's decisions? --R.  Sayre]]
>       *  the atom:entry element contains no atom:content element.
>          [[anchor27: Net result: Atom entries MUST have an atom:summary
>          or an atom:content element.]]
>       *  the atom:entry contains an atom:content that has a "src"
>          attribute (and is thus empty).
>       *  the atom:entry contains content that is encoded in Base64; i.e.
>          the "type" attribute of atom:content is a MIME media type
>          [RFC2045] and does not begin with "text/" nor end with "+xml".
> 
> Yes, this reflects the WG consensus, and yes, the implication is that  you need either summary or content.  I could live with taking that out  of Atom, but we need someone to make a formal proposal and build  consensus.