Subject: Atom Enclosures

From: Ray Slakinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 07:04:20 -0500

Hello all,

As some of you may know, 'podcasting' is  all the rage, it uses a tag 
called enclosure which is part of the RSS spec to distribute the 
content.

Basically the tag has a link to either a bittorrent file or audio file 
which a client like iPodderX (I'm a co-developer for) reads then works 
on accordingly. But the people that write software like iPodderX are 
running into a brick wall with RSS, and I now turn to Atom for 
assistance.

The biggest issue with enclosure that although the spec doesn't say one 
way or another you can not really do more than one enclosure per item.  
The reason this is a problem is that in a lot of cases a publisher 
wishes to provide a link to the mp3 file and the torrent file.  If the 
torrent fails to download it or does not support bittorrent it fails 
back to the direct link.  Or they want to provide notes to the show in 
text form or opml.  It only makes sense to group them under the item 
tag instead of breaking them out one entry at a time.

In Atom I've been made aware of the  <content src="http://somewhere" 
type="whatever"> tag, which would work very much like the RSS 
enclosure, but also has the same restrictions as its only good for one 
per item.  I'm hoping that since Atom is not final yet, that we can 
possibly see value in either extending the content tag or creating some 
sort of attachment/enclosure tag that allows for more than one per 
entry.

August and I worked on an RSS module to do something similar, but I've 
never liked modules for all kinds of reasons; Anyways, here is the 
spec: http://ipodderx.com/podcastRSSModule

[-----]
Ray Slakinski
Fingerprint: C8AD 4847 2DA8 3469 079D  13F9 135D F0CF 1CFC FD03

Blog: http://ddll.sdf1.net

Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
  	The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
  cork makes when it is popped.

---

From: Ray Slakinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 10:00:25 -0500

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I actually stand corrected

from the spec document:

"The "atom:content" element is a Content construct that  conveys the 
content of the entry. atom:entry elements MAY  contain one or more 
atom:content elements."

I could also use links as Eric suggested, but there is one last hurdle 
with either of these two tags.  In terms of what we do with podcasting 
a publisher puts his mp3 file into an enclosure tag (sorry for the RSS 
speak) we find that file and download it, we log the url so make sure 
if another site points to said file that we do not download it again.  
It turns out this isn't best practice as the url may change or be 
mirrored rendering that level of tracking useless.  Hence in our RSS 
module we introduces a GUID of sorts so the url/filename could  change 
but the GUID should remain the same to indicate to a client that the 
content is the same thing, so don't bother downloading it again.

Sorry for putting all this new info out to you, I just wanted to give 
some background on what we have been discussing in RSS land for over a 
month so I can catch you guys up on it all.

[-----]
Ray Slakinski

Let us live!!!
  Let us love!!!
  Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!

  You first.

On 29-Nov-04, at 7:04 AM, Ray Slakinski wrote:

>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hello all,
>
> The biggest issue with enclosure that although the spec doesn't say 
> one way or another you can not really do more than one enclosure per 
> item.  The reason this is a problem is that in a lot of cases a 
> publisher wishes to provide a link to the mp3 file and the torrent 
> file.  If the torrent fails to download it or does not support 
> bittorrent it fails back to the direct link.  Or they want to provide 
> notes to the show in text form or opml.  It only makes sense to group 
> them under the item tag instead of breaking them out one entry at a 
> time.
>
> possibly see value in either extending the content tag or creating 
> some sort of attachment/enclosure tag that allows for more than one 
> per entry.
>
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[-----]
Ray Slakinski

There once was a girl named Irene
  Who lived on distilled kerosene
  	But she started absorbin'
  	A new hydrocarbon
  And since then has never benzene.

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[-----]
Ray Slakinski

USER, n.:
  	The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."
  		-- Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top"