Subject: Re: draft-sneddon-atom-export (Was: Exporting a blog using Atom)

From: Geoffrey Sneddon <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 18:08:49 +0100

On 28 Mar 2009, at 18:30, John Panzer wrote:

> So people can see what we're talking about easily, I exported a  
> (test) blog
> and uploaded the xml here:
>
> http://www.johnpanzer.com/blogexport.xml
>
> Unfortunately this one didn't have comments, and only two entries,  
> so most
> of the data is taken up with settings.

What led you to actually try and use Atom to represent settings? It  
would seem far simpler to use some custom namespace for them, with a  
vocabulary specific to them — settings are more-or-less tool specific,  
so you gain little by having them in some format such as Atom.

> If you view it in a feed reader, you
> get something that looks a bit like key-value pairs (where each  
> entry is a
> key with a description and the content is the value).  There are  
> various
> drawbacks to the format, I'm not proposing it as a defined standard,  
> but we
> needed something to allow for export and import and it's an (IMHO)
> reasonable starting point.

It probably is a reasonable starting point, and having spoken to  
authors of a variety of blogging packages it seems going for something  
closer to it than what the current I-D has is more favoured (primarily  
because dealing with tar files in a memory efficient way can become  
fun, to say the least, in PHP, where there are quite often memory  
limits (per process) of around 8MB, and the export files could easily  
exceed that).

In some ways I'm tempted to try and come up with something that is  
compatible with existing Blogger-export-format importers, even if it  
isn't compatible the other way around (I think the latter would  
cripple the format from some realistic requirements that some packages  
have, whereas there is little reason not to do the former).

Finally, what are the drawbacks to the format from your point of view:  
you can probably think of things that I can't, in part simply because  
you have implementation experience with it.

> Looking at it in a reader, it's pretty clear that critical  
> information isn't
> being picked up by the generic reader, but it degrades fairly  
> gracefully I
> think.

I think there are one or two ways it could degrade better, but let's  
ignore this for now: there is no need to get into an endless paint-the- 
bikeshed discussion. I'll try and get another I-D together, um,  
sometime, though probably May/June.

--
Geoffrey Sneddon
<http://gsnedders.com/>

---

From: "James Holderness" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 19:13:37 +0100

Peter Keane wrote:
> Does the Blogger format (which I was championing) cripple their
> functionality?  Just curious....

Short answer: yes.

John Panzer wrote:
> (test) blog and uploaded the xml here:
>

I hadn't looked at the Blogger format until you posted that link. Once I saw 
it, though, I realised it was so laughingly bad, I just had to steal the 
idea for my April Fools' Day blog post (although maybe it wasn't that funny 
if you thought the format had any merit at all).

Having done that, I kind of forgot abut this thread, but I think it's 
probably best if I stay out of this discussion anyway. My interest in the 
archive format is somewhat tangential to the problem you're trying to solve.

However, I'd be grateful if everyone could try and avoid recommending their 
worst ideas as "best practices". That just makes my life more difficult.

Regards
James

---

From: Peter Keane <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 13:50:14 -0500

> worst ideas as "best practices". That just makes my life more difficult.

I'd be a lot more useful if you could explain your objections.
Meanwhile, I'll modify my statement to say "common" practice (instead
of "best" practice -- even though I quite like it -- it's indisputably
"common").  I'm all ears & willing to change my tune if there is
compelling evidence...

--peter

---

From: Peter Keane <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 14:00:11 -0500

Just for clarity, what I am asserting is the usefulness of
atom:category to express attributes of a feed or entry that are
particularly useful for machine processing and may or may not be
useful for human consumption (e.g. visibility: public/private).  And
that atom:category@label may be useful in distinguishing those which
are meant primarily for human consumption.

That, if I understand, is a very bad idea in your opnion (it may be
universally regarded as a bad idea and I am missing something).  Since
per the spec it is perfectly reasonable/valid, evidence or explanation
would be welcome.

--peter