Post

Author

Password

URI Delete Entry?

Title

Content

<div>I hear from 
<a href="http://captsolo.net/info/blog_a.php/2006/01/16/wordpress_to_drop_rdf_rss_1_0">Uldis</a>
and 
<a href="http://harry.hchen1.com/2006/01/16/234">Harry</a> there is

<a href="http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2006-January/004066.html">talk</a>
of dropping RSS 1.0 support from WordPress. Here's my
Ã¢âÂ¬0.02.
The 
"way too old" argument is empty. 
"It confuses the users" suggests that more work is needed
on autodiscovery tools, not that the user's options should be
reduced. The 
"RSS2 and Atom are both competent feed formats. All feed
readers these days are built to understand one or both of
them." 
<a href="http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2277">argument</a> isn't
unreasonable as far as it goes. But it makes the assumption that
what's offered by the different formats is the same, and should
only be considered in the context of current syndication tools. I
think that's a mistake, having the RSS 1.0 available means there is
a direct RDF representation of the data. There is very active RDF
development outside the syndication domain (e.g. this 
<a href="http://planetrdf.com/guide/">resource list</a> or 
<a href="http://dannyayers.com/archives/category/virtual-world/semantic-web/sw-weekly/">this</a>),
and for WP to cut the direct interoperability cord would be a
retrograde step. Ok, RSS 1.0 may not be the ideal RDF
representation - 
<a href="http://inamidst.com/rss1.1/">RSS 1.1</a> or an RDF/XML
serialization of 
<a href="http://atomowl.org">Atom/OWL</a> would be preferable,
primarily because they're both based on the revised RDF specs which
avoid the ugliness of escaped HTML in content. But RSS 1.0 is
supported by virtually every feed reader, and mass deployment of
cleaner RSS RDF/XML isn't likely in the near future.
I don't really know why the WP folks are even considering
removing RSS 1.0, their current source is reasonably well
structured, and the inclusion of the corresponding template for RSS
1.0 is hardly significant bloat. All they'll really achieve is
irritating a segment of the community.
Speaking personally, I'll echo one of Harry's points:
<blockquote>
 As a WordPress user, I like to have options. I want to be able
 to choose the format of RSS feeds that I publish. I don't want to
 be told what format is the "standard" format and what format is
 the "right" format.
</blockquote>
For a while now I've had RSS 1.0 as my only feed format, because
it simplifies the kind of experimentation I do.
One point I think that is worth making is that even if they did
pull RSS 1.0 support, it wouldn't be the end of the world for
Semantic Web applications of WordPress. The Atom format is
generally sufficient to provide a good machine-processable
representation of the data produced by WordPress, and deterministic
mapping from Atom to RDF is possible (RSS 2.0 is less suitable
because of the spec ambiguities, non-standard approach to resource
(item) identification and broken content model). For any
SemWeb-oriented system that consumes data from WordPress, the
absence of RSS 1.0 isn't a showstopper. However for a developer
working with SemWeb systems, they'll probably be considerably less
likely to choose WordPress if it lacks any RDF support. To put it
another way, I think the SemWeb community is in a position to say 
"Go on then, ditch RSS 1.0, see if we care…" ;-)
Ok, so now let's assume that supporting more than one
syndication format is impossible. Which should remain? Here's a
quick comparison of the main alternatives, assigning a value 1, 2
or 3 to various aspects, with 3 being the best. It is somewhat
subjective, but note I am erring quite strongly in favour of RSS
2.0 by giving "Human-Legibility" equal weighting with
"Not-Brokenness".
<table border="1">
 <tr>
 <td>
 Aspect\Format
 </td>
 <td>
 RSS 1.0
 </td>
 <td>
 RSS 2.0
 </td>
 <td>
 Atom
 </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>Base Functionality</td>
 <td>2</td>
 <td>1</td>
 <td>3</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>Not-Brokenness</td>
 <td>2</td>
 <td>1</td>
 <td>3</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>Extensibility</td>
 <td>3</td>
 <td>1</td>
 <td>2</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>Adoption</td>
 <td>1</td>
 <td>3</td>
 <td>2</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>Human-Legibility</td>
 <td>1</td>
 <td>3</td>
 <td>2</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>Computer-Legibility</td>
 <td>3</td>
 <td>1</td>
 <td>2</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>
 Total
 </td>
 <td>
 12
 </td>
 <td>
 10
 </td>
 <td>
 14
 </td>
 </tr>
</table>
Make of that what you will.[Danny]
</div>