[thelist] RE: RSS Not Simple?

[Keith Gaughan]

Steven Streight wrote:

> Is anyone else as frustrated about RSS as John Maeda?

Nope, never had any problems here. I find most of the problems people 
have with RSS tend to be misunderstandings as to how XML works. In
particular, the fact that <![CDATA[...]]> is actually just a convenience
feature and really nothing special.

That, and the specs just throw everything in together rather than saying
what you *really* need, followed by the easy, but not really needed
stuff, then rounding it up the more esoteric things you'll probably
never like enclosures.

The problem isn't the spec (though confusion between RSS/RDF 1.0 and
RSS 2.0 is reasonable enough), but the confusing way in which they're
written.

Here's how I see it: RSS 0.9x and RSS 2.0 are part of the main branch
of RSS. RSS 1.0 and (now) 1.1 are a seperate fork to try and RDF/XML-ise
the whole thing, and now a seperate syndication format of its own.

It's not a matter of over-engineering. RSS (the main branch) could never
be accused of being over-engineered. If anything it's a little
under-engineered. Now, RSS/RDF, that definitely is, but RSS isn't. Its
a case of second system syndrome, which is why Dave Winer leapfrogged
it and instead enhanced the pre-1.0 versions to make RSS 2.0. This is
why I refer to RSS 1.0 as RSS/RDF rather than plain old RSS 1.0: they're
essentially different schemas.

K.

-- 
Keith Gaughan, Developer
Digital Crew Ltd., Pembroke House, Pembroke Street, Cork, Ireland
http://digital-crew.com/