Subject: The like of RSS´ ttl, skipHours or skipDays

From: Jacob Larsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 18:17:47 +0200

Does Atom have the like of RSS´ ttl, skipHours or skipDays?

Thanks,
Jacob

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From: Walter Underwood <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 09:51:37 -0700

> Does Atom have the like of RSS´ ttl, skipHours or skipDays?

Not yet. I've volunteered to write a proposal for Expires, which
accomplishes all that with less fuss and a better mapping to
HTTP caching.

wunder
--
Walter Underwood
Principal Architect
Verity Ultraseek

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From: Danny Ayers <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 21:16:40 +0200

Does anyone have any data relating to the use of ttl etc and the syn
module?  Do some/all/most feed generators include them (usefully)? Do
some/all/most aggegators use them (usefully)?

"Expires" does seem a reasonable way forward, but when it comes to
performance, profiling stats are usually more accurate than intuition.

Cheers,
Danny.

-- 

http://dannyayers.com

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From: Graham <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 12:42:06 +0100

No, and I hope it never does, because they're really not useful and 
don't reflect how sites are published. What skipHours and skipDays do 
is require you to promise that you never publish anything between 
certain hours and on certain days, which is a too big a commitment for 
them to make or me to trust.

What would be useful is if a blogger could add a temporary note to 
their feed saying I'm going to bed now, I can absolutely guarantee 
nothing will change in the next few hours. Or a site that publishes 
once a day (but at  irregular times) can say here's today update, 
nothing more for at least 12 hours. Something like that.

Graham

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From: James Aylett <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 13:50:49 +0100

> them to make or me to trust.

Strictly, they require you to not care that users won't pick up new
items between certain hours and on certain days. It's a minor
distinction, really. I certainly don't think it's functionality we
care about for Atom.

> nothing more for at least 12 hours. Something like that.

An Expires semantic would solve that, which has been proposed I think.

James

-- 
/--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
  James Aylett                                                  xapian.org
  [email-masked]                               uncertaintydivision.org

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From: Dare Obasanjo <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 06:36:36 -0700 (PDT)

> them to make or me to trust.

I see those tags as another way for me to get bogus
bug reports from users who are wondering why my
aggregator didn't pick up posts in certain feeds on
particular days. 

Those elements are a hacky holdover from when the RSS
mavens didn't realize HTTP conditional GET requests
and GZip encoding existed. 

> nothing more for at least 12 hours. Something like

I probably would ignore this as well. I can't imagine
many people are going to manage this on a daily or
even weekly basis. Who cares about their RSS bandwidth
usage enough to micromanage stuff to that extent? 

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From: James Aylett <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 15:02:36 +0100

On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 06:36:36AM -0700, Dare Obasanjo wrote:
> > What would be useful is if a blogger could add a temporary
> > note to their feed saying I'm going to bed now, I can
> > absolutely guarantee nothing will change in the next few hours.
> 

It might be a useful thing to display as well, but it would depend on
how the publisher support worked. I suspect it would be of use only in
certain edge cases. Plus, it can be handled at the HTTP level (which
doesn't work for Bob, but Bob probably isn't an edge case).

James

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From: Brett Lindsley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 09:21:11 -0500

>usage enough to micromanage stuff to that extent? 

People with portable devices with limited bandwidth connections may 
worry about
their bandwidth usage.

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From: Dare Obasanjo <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 07:39:47 -0700 (PDT)

--- Brett Lindsley <[email-masked]>
> People with portable devices with limited bandwidth

There are people serving RSS feeds from their portable
device? This is news to me. 

If you are serving a blog and an RSS feed from your
portable device you have MUCH BIGGER bandwidth issues
than skip* and ttl can solve. :) 

=====

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From: Walter Underwood <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 09:20:46 -0700

--On Thursday, October 14, 2004 06:36:36 AM -0700 Dare Obasanjo <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> I probably would ignore this [Expires] as well. I can't imagine

A site that publishes press releases after the market close.
They can reliably say that the feed doesn't expire until the
next market close.

Plenty of sites have strict publishing schedules and some of
them are high volume.

The real advantage is also putting the date in HTTP headers so
that HTTP caches can handle conditional GETs from aggregators.
Whether they ignore Expires or are fetching the feed for the
first time, the cache can take the load.

wunder
--
Walter Underwood
Principal Architect
Verity Ultraseek

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From: Graham <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 18:02:11 +0100

> usage enough to micromanage stuff to that extent?

Well yes. It's the nearest thing to a useful way of doing it that I can 
think of, so I guess we all agree trying to predict the future is a 
waste of time?

Graham

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From: Walter Underwood <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 10:35:24 -0700

--On Thursday, October 14, 2004 06:02:11 PM +0100 Graham <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> Well yes. It's the nearest thing to a useful way of doing it that I can think
> of, so I guess we all agree trying to predict the future is a waste of time?

Making predictions is hard, but very useful. The caching folk have already
figured this out, all we need to do is follow their lead.

Some publishers *know* the future schedule, and that knowledge is much
better than a prediction.

wunder
--
Walter Underwood
Principal Architect
Verity Ultraseek

---

From: Danny Ayers <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 20:37:08 +0200

So would it be fair to summarise:

1. Feed schedule information in RSS 1.0 and 2.0 is/was generally
ignored and/or useless.

2. Most publishers and consumers will not see any benefit from
scheduling information provided  in-document

3. High volume publishers/consumers can gain from the inclusion of
scheduling information (cases like PubSub <=> Bloglines)

4. Virtually all the requirements for publishing information can be
delivered by the use of an <expires> element

If so, I'd say this points to including an optional <expires> element
in the spec.

Cheers,
Danny.
-- 

http://dannyayers.com

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From: Walter Underwood <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 12:02:08 -0700

Yes. Except for ...

> scheduling information provided  in-document

Most consumers will see a benefit from caching hints, because most
consumers will subscribe to at least one high-volume feed. Most
publishers will see a small benefit.

wunder
--
Walter Underwood
Principal Architect
Verity Ultraseek