Subject: Re: feed of versions - solves the missing middle entry problem?

From: Asbjørn Ulsberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 01:32:58 +0200

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 12:31:21 +1000, Eric Scheid  
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Someone (Sam? Danny?) noted the problem that if you have entries that  
> link in a chain to their prior versions, the chain could be broken if
> some entry in the middle was not retrieved during the time it was
> available.

Yes, but as I've mentioned earlier, this problem is actually _worse_ for  
non-versioned entries. To be more explicit: Entries are lost today as  
well. If you don't poll a feed for a week, you've surely missed several  
entries. Maybe even hundreds. Today, most (all?) lost entries are unique.  
With a versioning mechanism, lost entries are a version of an entry you've  
already seen somewhere.

At least you'll have the entry, even without its history. The history is,  
nonetheless, _completely_ missing from non-versioned entries. How is it  
worse to loose version-of entry than a unique one? I just don't get it.

>     #6 --> #5 --> #4 --> ???? --> #2 --> #1
>
> If entries #1-6 included a link to a feed which was all those entries,
> including the missing #3, then a publisher only ever needs to publish the
> current entry version at any point in time.

It's a nice solution which at least gives me something to think about in  
regard to the supersede mechanism. Great thinking. Let's have more of  
that, please. :-)

-- 
Asbjørn Ulsberg         -=|=-        [email-masked]
«He's a loathsome offensive brute, yet I can't look away»