Subject: editorial: atom:author and atom:contributor inheritance?

From: Eric Scheid <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 03:29:02 +1000

The spec-08 has this:

> 4.2.4 The "atom:copyright" Element
>    [...]
>    If an atom:entry element does not contain an atom:copyright element,
>    then the atom:copyright element of the containing atom:feed element's
>    atom:head element, if present, is considered to apply to the entry.
> 

... but no similar text is to be found against the spec for atom:author or
atom:contributor.

I do see this ...

>    atom:entry elements MUST contain exactly one atom:author element,
>    unless the atom:entry contains an atom:source element which contains
>    an atom:author element, or, in an Atom Feed Document, the atom:feed
>    element contains an atom:author element itself.

... but that doesn't explain that the atom:entry inherits the author from
the feed. It actually suggests that an entry may be author-less, because the
spec text for atom:author only says this:

>    The "atom:author" element is a Person construct that indicates the
>    author of the entry or feed.

Meanwhile - atom:contributor doesn't even get that. It only gets this...

>    atom:entry elements MAY contain any number of atom:contributor elements.

... not even a hint of inheritance.

Lastly ... section 4.2.11 (The "atom:source" Element) has this ...

>    Such metadata SHOULD be preserved if the source atom:feed contains any
>    of the child elements atom:author, atom:contributor, atom:copyright, or
>    atom:category and those child elements are not present in the source
>    atom:entry.

... which calls out atom:category in the same sentence as atom:author,
atom:contributor, and atom:copyright ... which might suggest that
atom:category should also be inherited. I don't recall what the thinking
was, but I'd +1 inheritance of atom:category from atom:feed into atom:entry.

e.