Re: RSS Revision - IssueMinimumOneItem

> OK, I was testing the water with this issue. At least it has provoked
> some interesting discussion. Speaking personally I think that allowing
> zero items isn't a syntax change per se, but I'll accept that it is a
> behavioural change. I'm convinced that 90% of readers will have no
> problem with an empty feed if the rdf:Seq is still present.
>
> However, the thrust of this revision is to clarify rather than improve
> so I think we should strengthen the case for producers to put at least
> one item in the feed, and at the same time ask consumers to be tolerant
> of zero items. Something like this: "Producers of RSS 1.0 should ensure
> that the channel contains at least one item. Consumers of RSS 1.0 should
> accept, without error, channels with zero items." That's the spirit of
> what I would like to see, not necessarily the best wording.

In thinking about this a bit I'm struck by the idea that allowing for an
empty feed may well have some utility.  Being able to have a feed document
indicate the absense of items would help in using it for applications
slightly outside the regular semantics of a typical newsfeed.  While there
are certainly going to be some 'issues' with playing loose with the rules if
it helps increase use of the format it seems worth thinking about.

Your notion of strongly encouraging presence of 1 or more items (up to 15)
while tolerating zero (or more than 15) items does seem like a reasonable
position.

This may also be a good time to fold some of the 'proposed' modules into
regular status.  Chris' dcterms module would certainly qualify.

-Bill Kearney



 
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