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Advantages of Atom over RSS

Comments[3] by Dave in Blogging

From the Atom Syntax mailing list, Tim Bray summarizes the advantages of Atom over RSS. 

1. There's zero ambiguity about single and double escaping, you can 
   use whichever suits your publication process better and not worry 
   about silent data loss.
2. You can include binary chunks right there in-feed, base64 encoded.
3. You get help for aggregate feeds using atom:origin
4. You have a date, atom:updated, with cleanly-specified semantics 
   ("publisher says something changed") that's *guaranteed to be there* 
   per-entry
5. It's in an XML namespace
6. It's got a good accessibility story: you have to have an atom:summary 
   if there's no src= or it's binary.
7. You have clean semantics for linking to the entry this describes or 
   the entry it's talking about.

Personally, I think these are highly significant. But even if you 
disagreed, there are two other reasons why it would be good to get the 
Atom format spec finished:

1. Atom has an official specification change-controlled by a 
   highly-independent standards org, there is no suspicion that any 
   vendor or individual is pulling the strings. This might not strike you 
   as important, but I assure you that there are lots of people to 
   whom it is.
2. The atom format is one foundation of the Atom publishing protocol, 
   and I guarantee that the world can *really* find a use for the protocol.


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Comments:

These advantages (#1-7) are fabricated. There's a clear argument against each. Just read Dare Obasanjo, Don Park and my RSS blog.

Posted by Randy Charles Morin on November 10, 2004 at 11:02 AM EST #

Fabricated means "to concoct in order to deceive" and I certainly do not think Tim is trying to decieve anybody. I just read <a href= "http://www.docuverse.com/blog/donpark/EntryViewPage.aspx?guid=35b17da2-4297-43ad-b913-ba12da01e4fe"> Don Park's post</a> on this topic and I totally agree with Danny Ayers' comment there.

Posted by Dave Johnson on November 10, 2004 at 11:27 AM EST #

Dave, Ummm! Here's some alternate definitions. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=fabricated&r=67 But I guess it's easily to respond by taking that definition. As per Danny's comments, I'll respond to them over there. Needless to say, I disagree.

Posted by Randy Charles Morin on November 10, 2004 at 05:22 PM EST #

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