Re: shared feed lists
"Bill Kearney" <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.network.syndication.discuss |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Use of a static file for something that could contain QUITE a few URLs is needlessly punative. You'd be forcing sites to create a static file from what might be very frequently changing data. Why? So it's easy to make a lazy request for an index? The inefficiency comes from forcing the sites offering data into using a fixed URL. This raises the hassles of using mod_rewrite, Options features and/or .htaccess files. Why? Who is this designed to help? What are they doing that's not aided by using a <link> tag? As for your claim of a single step, that's bull. You've already got the HTML page, look at it's contents. This instead of making a blind stab at what will probably not be present, raising 404 errors, confusing users and annoying website administrators. And here's the other benefit to a link tag, you can put them on as many web pages as you like. So if someone's reading http://hostingprovider.example.com/users/joe/weblog then they're not force to step all the way back to http://hostingprovider.example.com/ and get what may be a completely unrelated file. Instead if there's a page at http://hostingprovider.example.com/users/joe/weblog/archives/000001.html and there's an RSS feed or list of feeds that are best suited to being used with it then the link tag can indicate it. Otherwise, what're they supposed to do? Start walking up the URL path blindly stabbing around for: http://hostingprovider.example.com/users/joe/weblog/archives/default.feedlist http://hostingprovider.example.com/users/joe/weblog/default.feedlist http://hostingprovider.example.com/users/joe/default.feedlist http://hostingprovider.example.com/users/default.feedlist http://hostingprovider.example.com/default.feedlist That'd be not just one request but FIVE blindly stabbing around. Raising five different 404 errors and probably not getting anything useful in the process. How is this a well engineered solution? What if there /were/ lists at other points 'up' in the path hierarchy? What mechanism would have to be cobbled up to indicate whether or not they're 'related' to the other parts of the hiearchy? Your overly simple idea gets messy in a hurry (but this is not a new symptom) Instead each page could contain a link tag that might even point to an entirely different place! As in, we offer users the ability to create their own personal lists of feeds. They can download them in several different formats. Instead of the user having to bother creating this thing on their site they could simply point to the one they publish on ours or some other service. As in: http://www.syndic8.com/userinfo.php?UserID=wkearney99&Section=lists Here I'm not using static files. That and they're my feed lists, not the site as a whole. Cripes, that'd be obscenely large. We've got 16k feeds we know about. Should we needlessly publish that big-ass document into a static file just so your hack will work? Who would we be 'helping' by hemorrhaghing that bandwidth? Instead our HTML pages (well, most of them) contain already established standard forms of <link> tags. Let's not have another half-baked one-off clog up what could otherwise be a really good idea. A good idea that many folks have suggested before. In short, putting forth a standard that says 'use a <head> section <link> tag, appropriately typed, as a pointer to feeds' works out better all around. -Bill Kearney ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Winer" <dave-rH/ioLL7x7RWk0Htik3J/[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 9:49 AM Subject: Re: [syndication] shared feed lists > First let's take out the emotionally charged words, blindly, waste, clog up, > etc. > > Do the math. I answered this question in the Q&A. I don't know how to answer > it again without just repeating the answer. > > But let's try anyway. ;-> > > Assume you look for a link to the directory file in the HTML of the home > page of the site. > > To find the directory, you: > > 1. Read the index file. > > 2. Look for the link element. > > 3. Read the directory file it points to. > > In the approach I'm advocating you: > > 1. Read the directory file. > > Now please explain why is the first approach more efficient. Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/