Blogging Roller

Pat Chanezon suggests that the developers of the newsfeed parsers, newsfeed generators, and blog API client libraries should come together, learn from each other, and -- at JavaOne -- educate the rest of the Java community about syndication and publication technologies. I'm included in his list of developers because of Roller and because of my recent work on Blogs, Wikis, and Feeds In Action which includes a blog client library which works with either Atom or XML-RPC based blog servers.

I think this is a great idea. As you might expect, each of us has our own point of view and different needs for our APIs. For example, some developer prefer a SAX like approach like Kevin Burton's FeedParser while others prefer a DOM like approach like Rome. And, some developers want a liberal parser while others prefer "draconian" XML error handling.

If we put together a joint session, we'll each get insight into each other's motivations and needs, we'll educate others, and we may just find our way towards a common set of interfaces -- perhaps even a JSR - for publishing and syndication. We've got to move quickly though; the JavaOne deadline is January 31.