Subject: Re: PaceDateModified

From: Antone Roundy <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 08:26:30 -0700

Back from vacation and...HOLY GUACAMOLE! Lots of reading to do.

On Friday, October 29, 2004, at 09:42  AM, Bob Wyman wrote:
> 	If atom:updated is used to flag only those changes that the author
> of an entry wishes to bring to the attention of readers, then it seems 
> to me
> that intermediaries should respect the publisher's statements and 
> ignore any
> updates that are not so flagged. If this is correct, then any change
> detection on the part of intermediaries should be considered a bad 
> thing.
> Intermediaries should not be generating entry hashes or otherwise 
> trying to
> detect changes.
> 	The model seems to be that an aggregator needs to build a database
> of entries that has columns for atom:id and atom:updated. I should 
> then only
> process those entries that have atom:updated values that are greater 
> then
> what was previously stored for any given atom:id. No matter how great 
> the
> difference may be between two versions of an entry, I should not pay 
> any
> attention to the difference unless explicitly "told to" by a new
> atom:updated value.
> 	This implies that if I find multiple versions of an entry, I should
> ignore all but the *first* instance of an entry found with any 
> particular
> atom:updated value. I should not be concerned with identifying the 
> "latest"
> version since any version that shares the same atom:updated value is
> equivalent in the opinion of the publisher. The opinion of the 
> publisher is
> paramount in these issues.
>
> 	Does what I've said above match what is believed by those who
> support atom:updated

Here's what I'd expect an aggregator to do:
1) Find new atom:id/atom:updated combo: send it on to your subscribers
2) Find old atom:id/atom:updated combo in entry with other data 
changed: update internal cache so that if the entry is still in the 
sliding window be sent to some user, it gets sent with the changes

> to the exclusion of atom:modified?
I'm responding to your question in spite of the fact that I'm not 
necessarily opposed to publishing this information, just that I'd 
rather see it in a dcterms element.