Subject: Question regarding atom:published and atom:updated

From: Henry Story <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 16:19:45 +0100

As I understand it, two Entries in draft-ietf-atompub-format-03 [1], 
can only be identified if they have the same id. Another way of saying 
this is that if two entries have the same id, then they are two 
different versions of the same Entry.

This leads me to wonder if I am correctly reading the following 
passages. In Section 5.8 it is stated that:

    The "atom:published" element is a Date construct indicating an
    instant in time associated with an event early in the life cycle of
    the entry.  Typically, atom:published will be associated with the
    initial creation or first availability of the resource.

My reading of this is that atom:published specifies the date of 
publication of the first version of the Entry to be published. Which is 
to say that it cannot change between versions of an Entry, ie. Entries 
with the same id.

    The "atom:updated" element is a Date construct indicating the most
    recent instant in time when a change to the entry was made that the
    publisher wishes to bring to the attention of subscribers.  For
    example, such changes might not include minor adjustments like
    spelling and grammatical corrections.

My reading of this then is that the atom:updated date is the 
publication time of the version of the entry in which the text appears. 
Ie. two Entry constructs with the same id can (and usually will) have 
different updated dates.

As I understand it we have the something along the lines of the 
following change from draft-ietf-atompub-format-01 [1]

	atom:created  -> not specified
	atom:issued   -> atom:published
	atom:modified -> atom:updated

Henry Story

[1] http://ietf.levkowetz.com/drafts/atompub/format/

---

From: Graham <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 16:39:15 +0000

> atom:created  -> not specified

Yes.

> atom:issued   -> atom:published

Near enough (in that issued never had a formal definition).

> atom:modified -> atom:updated

Not really. There's not a 1:1 relationship between modifications and 
updates, though there is some overlap.

What was the question, anyway?

Graham

---

From: Henry Story <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 18:00:04 +0100

I was just checking that I had understood the spec correctly.

In short:
	- the publication date is really the "first publication date of the 
entry" and
	- the update date is the "date this version of the entry was 
published".

Looks like I am on the right track it seems.

Henry