Subject:
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RSS vs. Atom (was: Attention All RSS Geeks)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.publish
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Date:
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Tue, 24 Aug 2004 05:42:13 GMT
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Viewed:
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3575 times
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Time to break this into a subthread, I think...
RSS v. Atom - Pro and Con Time
So now that I’ve spent the last few hours reading the
contentious history[1] of RSS v2.0 and what’s become Atom (although the Homer
Simpson in me liked its previous name, “Pie”), and one thing has become clear...
It’s still not clear.
Oh, and a quick aside - reading all the RSS/Atom mudslinging has given me a
greater appreciation for the people on LUGNET, who generally behave themselves
and act like homo sapiens, even when they disagree. The foofooraw over a tech
spec (!) is amusing and alarming, by turns.
OK, back to biz.
Question: Should LENNI use RSS v2.0 or Atom v0.3 as a base to build from?
Not sure of the answer yet. I think I’ve got enough background to put together a
pro/con list, though, for our purposes.
RSS v2.0 Pro & Con list
RSS 2.0 Spec[2]
- Pro: Simple, as in Really Simple.
- Pro: Power in numbers - lots of aggregators for it.
- Pro: It’s a spec and not an API (for LENNI’s purposes this is a pro, I think)
- Pro: Extensible via namespaces to achieve what we want (I think)
- Con: Elements don’t have built-in attributes like Atom (author name, etc.)
- Con: Very loose spec, open to multiple interpretations (e.g. character type encoding in titles, etc.)
- Con: Locked, but not loaded. It’s essentially a dead-end technology that won’t grow.
Atom v0.3 Pro & Con list
Atom
Spec[3]
- Pro: “Out of the box” includes better elements (author name, etc.)
- Pro: Active development community
- Pro: Google uses it for Blogger
- Pro: Most aggregators now support Atom
- Pro: Can use namespace declaration to pull in lists of Themes, etc.[4]
- Pro: Supposedly more extensible (see below)
- Con: Extensibility descriptions sparse, at best[5]
- Con: Spec is in early phase and could change radically before finalized
- Con: It’s not just a spec, it’s an entire API that details how HTTP/XML servers should parse Atom feeds and elements. This is overkill for LENNI’s purposes (although it has a high beanie propeller RPM)
- Con: Less well-integrated into existing aggregators, so there’s smaller market penetration, at least in the early stages of deployment (ooh, marketing speak coming out, sorry)
- Con: More elements are required (e.g. guid), forcing more work from developers (but this might not be a bad thing, unless you’re lazy like me)
Conclusion Thus Far
As you can see, it’s about even on the pluses and minuses for each format.
Frankly, I’m kind of put off by the bickering between each camp’s proponents,
none of the parties involved really come off shining. Ah well - as long as the
code works, I guess.
For right now, I’m slightly leaning toward RSS, but that may only be because I
see fairly clearly the method of implementation necessary to get LENNI working
on an RSS base. Atom may actually be closer to what is needed, but it’s not as
clear to me how to extend it, and whether extending the XML format will break
brand-new Atom parsers or not.
So here I am, sitting on the fence, waiting to be nudged one way or t’other.
Thoughts?
Kelly
[1]
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/crimson1/comments?u=crimson1&p=1696&link=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.law.harvard.edu%2Fcrimson1%2F2004%2F05%2F31%23a1696
[2] http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
[3]
http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php
[4]
http://bitworking.org/news/Extending_the_AtomAPI
[5]
http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php - see
#7
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: RSS vs. Atom (was: Attention All RSS Geeks)
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| Hi Kelly, (...) As said earlier by mail, I think that this is the most important thing to have implemented in a "LEGO community related" newssystem. Since I got no replies after I mentioned it in the globalAFOL group, I thought the participated (...) (20 years ago, 24-Aug-04, to lugnet.publish, FTX)
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