Subject: spec text regarding feed/entry inheritance

From: Eric Scheid <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 19:43:34 +1000

The question of inheritance of author/contributor from feed into entry needs
to be disambiguated. I looked from the format-08 text and found that we
already have reasonable wording in section 4.2.4 (The "atom:copyright"
Element). There is also a hint in section 4.2.11 (The "atom:source" Element)
that some other elements should also be inheritable.

Proposal: insert text similar to § 4.2.4 ¶ 3 into

    § 4.2.1 The "atom:author" Element
    § 4.2.2 The "atom:category" Element
    § 4.2.3 The "atom:contributor" Element

------------------------- some relevant snippets -------------------------

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.

4.1.2 The "atom:entry" Element
>    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:

4.2.11 The "atom:source" Element
>    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.

---

From: Dan Brickley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 06:05:17 -0400

* Eric Scheid <[email-masked]> [2005-05-23 19:43+1000]
> to be disambiguated. 

Yup.

Is anybody working on a set of AtomPub test cases? That strikes me as a
clear an implementor-friendly way of exploring corner cases here. It 
really helped us a huge amount at W3C when cleaning up the RDF and RDFS 
specs in the RDFCore WG, btw --- especially when working out what 
bits of data we considered as 'implied by the spec' given other data as
input. http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-testcases/ describes the manifest format 
we used, and the way test cases are linked to the WG's issue list.

In Atom, re inheritance, it'd be great just having a collection of pairs of 
Atom docs, and a flag to say whether the first can be considered implied (eg. 
by inheritance rules) from the second. Maybe such a thing could live in 
the Wiki?

Dan

ps. is it only built-in properties from the Atom ns that can be
inherited? Or extensions too?

---

From: Bill de hÓra <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 13:15:48 +0100

Dan Brickley wrote:

> Is anybody working on a set of AtomPub test cases? 

Not quite; I'm working up some sample documents around authoring in 
particular to see if the WG could agree on the author/contributors for 
particular entries. I'm waiting until the next draft ships before 
raising that here.

> by inheritance rules) from the second. 

That's a good approach.

> inherited? Or extensions too?

Again, this will reviewed when the next draft comes around.

cheers
Bill