Atom tan

I have finally gotten around to implementing syndication for this blog. You'll see the link added to the sidebar. Syndication, for those who don't know, is really just a fancy way of referring to an XML representation of the blog's main page content. It can be a whole lot more than that, but that's how most people use it. The idea is that by using XML you can create machine-readable content so special-purpose applications, such as NetNewsWire, can make it easier to read content from various sources. Not a bad idea at all.

There are basically three syndication formats, divided into RSS and Atom. RSS has the problem of being schismatic, with egos driving two different versions of it. For that reason I went with Atom. I also prefer Atom because it's unencumbered by the bloat and complexity of RDF. While RDF may have its uses, I don't think a syndication format is one of them. The RDF-based RSS format can end up with pages bigger than their HTML counterparts, which seems counter-productive.

Implementing Atom should have been easier than it was. I couldn't locate complete documentation of the documentation structure. After looking at the atom feeds of various sites (some of which are seriously non-conforming) and locating the Feed Validator, I was able to implement what appears to be a valid feed. It really is pretty straightforward and some improved implementation documentation could really help adoption of Atom.

kherr @ 01:47 CST | link | tech