Re: Renewed interest in evolving RSS?

> Why separate the meta from the content?  Seems silly to me.

The single best reason to avoid putting content into a feed is saving
bandwidth.  Let's say you use feeds to 'keep tabs' on hundreds of different
sites.  It'd be horribly wasteful to bother downloading the entire article
content for stuff you're not likely to read anytime soon.

By the same token it's likely that some sites will have items that are
always of interest.  Fortunately many sites offer both, lightweight
headlines and full content feeds.

> It is
> less useful to separate.  I thought that the idea was to combine the
> metadata with the content and this was the whole justification for
> xml in the first place.  Otherwise, if you wanted to separate the
> data definition from the data, you could just as well use COBOL.

Programming language non-sequitors aside, that's not what justifies XML.
The advantage of XML is more flexible interop.  That it *can* be used for
both lightweight and full content feeds that are mostly content without
presentation is a great thing but it's not the only thing.

> A more useful standard would be to put the news content right in
> there with the xml tags.  Like: <content>The story goes
> here.</content>  Simple, yet highly useful.

Simple yet highly wasteful on devices or users on limited bandwidth
connections.  Forcing a PDA or cell phone device to download gobs of content
doesn't make much sense.   Better to let them use the lightweight headlines
to pick and choose what else they need.

If you've got feeds you read all the time then by all means make use of full
content delivery from them if it suits you.  I, however, track over 1300
feeds a day in by personal list.  Usage patterns have shown I only read full
content from about 100 of them on a daily basis.  Had I used full content
feeds from them I'd have wasted 1200 feed's worth of THEIR bandwidth as well
as mine.

It's about choices not specific demands about which form is better than
another.  Modules make it possible to mix together as much or as little as
desired.

-Bill Kearney
Syndic8.com



 
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