Subject: Resources for Atom beginners

From: Peter Keane <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:17:25 -0600

Many folks have noted that the stimulus package passed by Congress has some
reporting stipulations that specifically require that agencies provide
"feeds" of information preferably in Atom 1.0 (although RSS -- no version
mentioned -- is acceptable).  See appendix one in
http://www.recovery.gov/files/Initial%20Recovery%20Act%20Implementing%20Guidance.pdf
.

So perhaps we'll have lots of folks wanting to know a bit more about Atom in
the near future.  I am wondering what the state of documentation is for
someone wanting to learn more.  A google search turns up AtomEnabled.org,
but it still looks to be somewhat out of date.  Is that site being
maintained?

It would certainly be nice also to outline the prefered libraries for
creating Atom in Java, Perl, Python, PHP, C#, etc.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?  While it's nice to see that someone was
saavy enough about Atom to include it, in the spirit of "being the
change..." and all that, it might be a good opportunity for the Atom
community to be proactive in getting help to folks who might need it (and
perhaps making a pitch for AtomPub if/when some of these agencies want to
establish an API).

--peter keane

---

From: Erik Wilde <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:47:32 -0800

hello peter.

> Anyone have any thoughts on this?  While it's nice to see that someone 
> was savvy enough about Atom to include it, in the spirit of "being the 
> community to be proactive in getting help to folks who might need it 
> (and perhaps making a pitch for AtomPub if/when some of these agencies 
> want to establish an API).

i think this is an excellent idea. it will not be easy, though, and it 
might benefit from some coordination for those interested in helping (i 
would be interested to help, maybe in coordination, and in doing some 
writing). http://dret.typepad.com/dretblog/atom-landscape.html is my 
modest attempt to keep track of what's happening in the atom landscape, 
but there is almost no explanation of what the standards do or propose 
to do. but it seems to me that certain patterns (such as the recently 
discussed "tombstone pattern") of using atom will probably be 
encountered by more and more people, and if there were some good 
resource that explained what atom did, what atom extensions are 
available or under discussion, and how to best map collections to atom, 
that would probably help to increase the quality of the atom feeds being 
made available.

maybe there is something out there that does exactly that, if that's the 
  case, i would be interested to be pointed to it.

cheers,

dret.

---

From: Asbjørn Ulsberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:33:32 +0100

On Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:17:25 +0100, Peter Keane <[email-masked]> wrote:

> So perhaps we'll have lots of folks wanting to know a bit more about  
> Atom in the near future.  I am wondering what the state of documentation
> is for someone wanting to learn more.  A google search turns up
> AtomEnabled.org, but it still looks to be somewhat out of date.  Is that
> site being maintained?

I think Sam Ruby is the owner of the domain.

> creating Atom in Java, Perl, Python, PHP, C#, etc.

Indeed.

> Anyone have any thoughts on this?

I think the best thing to do is to install a Wiki and outline a set of guidelines on how to move forward with documenting everything.

-- 
Asbjørn Ulsberg         -=|=-          [email-masked]
«He's a loathsome offensive brute, yet I can't look away»