Subject: Re: Proposed changes for format-11

From: David Powell <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 08:39:12 +0100

draft-11:

> This specification does not place any restrictions on what elements
> may be used as Metadata Extensions, but the RelaxNG grammar
> explicitly excludes elements in the Atom namespace. The Atom
> namespace is reserved for future forwards-compatable revisions of
> Atom.

I'm not sure I like this paragraph. It starts by saying that it places
no restriction on the elements, then mentions the RelaxNG, then in the
final sentence, it says that actually there is a restriction after
all. I don't know - perhaps I'm not reading it right, but it sounds
contradictory. It would make more sense to me if everything was
dropped except the last sentence.

Also, Section 6.4 still doesn't permit Extension Elements in atom:source.
I thought that we were going to fix this:
http://www.imc.org/atom-syntax/mail-archive/msg15916.html

And, did we ever get a resolution to the composite MIME types thing
(I'm guessing that we didn't):
http://www.imc.org/atom-syntax/mail-archive/msg15911.html

-- 
Dave

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From: Eric Scheid <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 18:50:55 +1000

> dropped except the last sentence.

I agree, especially since elsewhere the RelaxNG is noted to be Informative,
not Normative.

e.

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From: Sam Ruby <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 10:19:31 -0400

> I agree, especially since elsewhere the RelaxNG is noted to be Informative,

This paragraph appears to be expressing two separate thoughts.  Perhaps
the solution is to separate the thoughts into separate paragraphs.

Perhaps the following could be added to section 6.2:

  The Atom namespace is reserved for future forwards-compatable
  revisions of Atom.

Which would enable the text in appendix B to simply state:

  The RelaxNG grammar explicitly excludes elements in the Atom
  namespace which are not defined in this revision of the specification.

- Sam Ruby

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From: Robert Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 11:12:11 -0400

> the solution is to separate the thoughts into separate paragraphs.

That's a good rule of thumb.

>   The Atom namespace is reserved for future forwards-compatable

Sounds OK to me, but I recall squawking about this.

>   namespace which are not defined in this revision of the specification.

Sounds good.

Robert Sayre

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From: "A. Pagaltzis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 17:55:45 +0200

* Robert Sayre <[email-masked]> [2005-08-01 17:25]:
> >   The Atom namespace is reserved for future
> >   forwards-compatable revisions of Atom.

s/compatable/compatible/

> Sounds OK to me, but I recall squawking about this.

There wasn’t any squawking about the rule as such, I think. A
minor amount of squawking was about what a consumer should do
when it encounters Atom-namespaced elements in locations it
didn’t expect them.

Per spec: it should simply treat them as unknown foreign markup.
Intent: this allows old consumers to continue working with future
revisions of the spec, so long as changes are not so drastic that
a new namespace is warranted to prevent existing consumers from
doing anything with new documents.

(You probably know this, of course…)

I think that specification of behaviour is a wise choice.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>

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From: Antone Roundy <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 10:29:21 -0600

> doing anything with new documents.
It sounds to me like we might benefit from adding language specifying 
that elements in the Atom namespace can appear as children of elements 
from other namespaces, but may not appear as children of elements in 
the Atom namespace except as specified by the spec (or from wording the 
language to be added so that it says that).

...I am correct about our intent to allow Atom elements to be used as 
children of extension elements, right?  For example, that one be able 
to do this:

<foo:bar qwerty="asdf">
	<atom:title>My title</atom:title>
	<atom:link rel="foo:my-rel" href="..." />
</foo:bar>

...rather than having to do this:

<foo:bar qwerty="asdf">
	<foo:title>My title</foo:title>
	<foo:link rel="foo:my-rel" href="..." />
</foo:bar>

...right?