Subject: Author of an empty feed?

From: Phil Ringnalda <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 21:46:39 -0800

The feedvalidator currently considers it an error to have a feed with 
zero entry elements which doesn't have an author element at the feed 
level. Am I missing something, or is that wrong?

4.1.1 says

    o  atom:feed elements MUST contain one or more atom:author elements,
       unless all of the atom:feed element's child atom:entry elements
       contain at least one atom:author element.

without mentioning the "all none of the zero atom:entry elements" case, 
and 4.2.1 says

    If an atom:entry element does not contain atom:author elements, then
    the atom:author elements of the contained atom:source element are
    considered to apply.  In an Atom Feed Document, the atom:author
    elements of the containing atom:feed element are considered to apply
    to the entry if there are no atom:author elements in the locations
    described above.

without saying anything about how atom:author at the entry level might 
apply to a feed. Since in the case of atom:author coming from 
atom:source, it doesn't (the author of a republished entry certainly 
isn't the author of the feed metadata), I'd claim that an empty feed 
shouldn't be required to have an author, since it's only needed for 
inheritance down to an entry.

Phil Ringnalda

---

From: "James Holderness" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 03:32:01 -0000

> inheritance down to an entry.

I agree completely. IMHO some of these "MUST contain" requirements would be 
far more appropriate as editorial suggestions rather than protocol 
requirements. When there's any room for interpretation I'm all for leaving 
them out rather than forcing them to be included unnecessarily. Otherwise 
the feed producer just ends up fabricating random data whose only purpose is 
to meet a spec requirement but otherwise benefits nobody.

Regards
James