Subject: PaceOptionalFeedLink

From: Tim Bray <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 15:42:29 -0700

+1

There are people who want to publish feeds without rel="alternate" 
links.  I'm against telling people they can't do something they want to 
do without strong reasons, as in loss of interoperability.  I don't see 
the reasons here as strong enough.  -Tim

---

From: Sam Ruby <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 22:50:09 -0400

> the reasons here as strong enough.  -Tim

FYI: we have an instance proof of this requiring an existing tool to do 
additional work:

   http://www.imc.org/atom-syntax/mail-archive/msg13983.html

- Sam Ruby

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From: Graham <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 04:04:27 +0100

On 6 May 2005, at 3:50 am, Sam Ruby wrote:

> FYI: we have an instance proof of this requiring an existing tool  
> to do additional work:
>

Tools will have to be updated to work with Atom? Scandalous.

+1 to the Pace

Graham

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 12:31:54 +0200

Graham wrote:
>> FYI: we have an instance proof of this requiring an existing tool  to 
>> do additional work:
>>

+1 as well. That something which has been developed against a previous 
draft will not work with a change in the format seems to be quite natural.

On the other hand, we also heard of feeds that need to "make up" links 
(which doesn't seem very useful to me).

Best regards,

Julian

---

From: Sam Ruby <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 08:26:33 -0400

> Tools will have to be updated to work with Atom? Scandalous.

This Pace is not one that I plan to lie down in the road over.  However, 
it continues to puzzle the bejeebers out of me.

The channel link element is required in every version of RSS from 0.91 
to 1.0 to 2.0.  And as a co-author of the feedvalidator, I have seen a 
lot of broken feeds where people have either inadvertently or 
deliberately ignored the specification, but I don't recall ever seeing 
one where this element was not present.

My concern is not that tools will need to be updated.  My concern is 
that tools won't know that they need to update.  How will they know that 
they need to update to handle a set of feeds that nobody is currently 
providing?

Something that WOULD attract my attention is somebody saying "here is a 
set of feeds that I would like to provide that I can't provide in a 
valid way according to any of the available RSS specifications."

- Sam Ruby

---

From: Graham <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 13:43:14 +0100

On 6 May 2005, at 1:26 pm, Sam Ruby wrote:

> My concern is not that tools will need to be updated.  My concern  
> is that tools won't know that they need to update.  How will they  
> know that they need to update to handle a set of feeds that nobody  
> is currently providing?

How is this different to any of the other new features in Atom? No  
one agrees with you on this point; If you don't have anything else,  
please stop making everyone else's life harder by labouring a point  
that doesn't affect you in any way.

> Something that WOULD attract my attention is somebody saying "here  
> is a set of feeds that I would like to provide that I can't provide  
> in a valid way according to any of the available RSS specifications."

I have private RSS feeds showing new referrals for my websites. They  
do not have corresponding web pages, and don't have feed-level links.  
I think these kind of feeds make up a significant chunk of the demand  
for dropping the requirement.

Graham

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 15:32:39 +0200

> one where this element was not present.

Which shows that those who don't have a useful link to report just make 
something up. If Atom requires the link, the situation will likely be 
the same. I just don't get how this is better than just stating "there's 
no alternative representation" instead.

Out of the three feeds I currently generate/author, only one has 
meaningful "alternate" version.

> they need to update to handle a set of feeds that nobody is currently 

Which tools are you talking about? Tools that consume RSS variants, or 
tools that consume earlier Atom format versions? The latter will have to 
be upgraded anyway because of the changing XML namespace.

> valid way according to any of the available RSS specifications."

As stated earlier, this is the case here. I had to make up the 
"alternate" link value just to satisfy the validator 
(<http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgreenbytes.de%2Ftech%2Fwebdav%2Fwebdav-ietf.rss>).

Best regards,

Julian

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From: Bill de hÓra <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 16:20:09 +0100

> valid way according to any of the available RSS specifications."

Sam,

would:

  <link rel="no-alternate"/>

work for you? This could make/encourage those who don't have alternates 
to say so and might allow downstream code to make better assumptions. If 
you like the idea, and we're not past the point, I'll write a pace.

cheers
Bill

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From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 18:44:39 +0900

>> There are people who want to publish feeds without rel="alternate" 
links.  I'm against telling people they can't do something they want to do 
without strong reasons, as in loss of interoperability.  I don't see the 
reasons here as strong enough.  -Tim

+1 here, too, since long ago.

 >   http://www.imc.org/atom-syntax/mail-archive/msg13983.html

Well, yes, but how much work can that possibly be?

Regards,    Martin.

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From: Robert Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 12:43:51 -0400

> reasons here as strong enough.  -Tim

+1  as well. In this case, the problems faced by producers seem to
outweigh those faced by consumers. The link doesn't seem to be helpful
as an identifier, so that's orthogonal.

Robert Sayre