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I completely agree with Uche's sentiments. When I first saw the RSS
brouhaha and read many mentions the need for Ultra-liberal RSS
parsers[0] I wondered why they bothered with XML and didn't just use
some other format instead. The only reason I can think of is buzzword
compliance.
[0]
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/08/13.html#ultraliberal_rss_parser
--
PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM
Marriage is the only union that has consistently defied management.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Uche Ogbuji [mailto:uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com]
> Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 9:00 PM
> To: Joe Gregorio
> Cc: Mike Champion; xml-dev@lists.xml.org; 'Mark Pilgrim'
>
>
> > > 1 - Politics happens, Evolution is continuous, deal with it.
> > > With technology, as best you can. Don't make technology choices
> > > that are fragile in the face of human nature.
> >
> > I would add: "Don't make technology choices that are fragile in the
> > face of the currently available toolsets." For example,
> using RDF in
> > RSS 1.0.
>
> What does this mean? You might want to look at the
> impressive variety of RDF tools listed at
>
> http://www.ilrt.bristol.ac.uk/discovery/rdf/resources/
>
> before answering.
>
>
> > > 2 - Namespaces - work best for mixing instances of well-defined
> > > vocabularies/schemas together, they don't work so well
> to support
> > > evolution or un-typed XML. Schema evolution using namespaces is
> > > a Known to Be Hard, TAG-level problem.
> >
> > I'd generalize your observations here to not just encompass schemas
> > but to all types of validation. Validation seems anathma to
> evolvable.
>
> This sounds like the rallying cry of the Knights of Tag Soup.
>
> Validation is mostly an obstacle to evolution if designed
> using the wrong tools in careless hands.
>
>
> > > If you want to leverage commonly deployed code that understands
> > > a specific namespace (XHTML, SVG, etc.), the full-blown
> Namespaces
> > > in XML is your friend, well Real Soon Now anyway. If you just
> > > want to disambiguate tags, it has lots of little gotchas
> > > (that "RSS 2.0" seems to have been gotten by!) that make it a
> > > challenge for people who don't grok its subtleties. (MOST OF
> > > THE REAL WORLD!!!)
>
> Let us not forget that most of the real computing world does
> not grok the
> subtleties of XML, Java, HTML, PC architecture, e-mail, or
> even the Internet.
>
> Time to shut up shop and go home? I think not.
>
>
> > > 3 - If you don't know exactly what you're dealing with, heuristics
> > > beat logic. If the tag is <table> and it has
> > > HTML table elements inside it, it's probably an HTML
> table! Don't
> > > throw it away because it's in the wrong namespace.
> >
> > I'd say that "heuristics beats validation".
>
> How are the two supposedly in a fight, again?
>
>
> > This gets into the social aspects of RSS as an 'evolvable' format.
> > Many of the feeds are produced by some home grown CMS or are
> > even created by hand. This highlights the need for a
> > format to be as simple as possible.
>
> It's based on XML. Therefore, it is impossible for it to be
> "as simple as
> possible".
>
>
> > The other aspect is that many people implementing RSS may not
> > have read the RSS spec (never mind the XML spec) they're just
> > using an example RSS file as boilerplate. Again, another 'tools'
> > issue. Paraphrasing a conversation
> > I had with another developer when he was talking about
> creating an RSS feed:
> >
> > "I thought to my self, I could do this the *right* way and use
> > the DOM API in my scripting language and have it take me an hour,
> > or I could just use printf and be done in 10 minutes.
> > I did the printf thing, it's just a blog."
>
> Again, why bother with XML? WHy not just make it CSV with
> some hand-waving
> notes on structure in the spec? People who "do the printf
> thing" rarely even
> produce WF XML. I see no reason to accommodate such
> slovenliness. If one
> thinks it's necessary to do so in order to accommodate
> everyman, then they
> should dispense with the lie that they are using XML.
>
>
> --
> Uche Ogbuji Fourthought, Inc.
> http://uche.ogbuji.net http://4Suite.org http://fourthought.com
> Apache 2.0 API -
> http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-apache/
> Python&XML column: Tour of Python/XML -
> http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/09/18/py.
> html
> Python/Web Services column: xmlrpclib -
> http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/w
> ebservices/library/ws-pyth10.html
>
>
>
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