Re: RSS 1.1

Would it not be a good idea then to discuss the currently available tools specifically as to their credits (or discredits) and keep track of those tools which perform according to the specifications and do in fact respect all this effort by so many folks committed to doing these correctly.
 
I see two issues here, one issue regarding the willingness of others to move towards adoption of new developments both quickly and willingly and those folks that never do.  The greater question also is of course, which adoptions are correctly applied?
 
While it may serve this community to emphasize the source of sloppy noncompliant work is from developers and their adoption practices ( halfway or close is good enough) and strongly noting the extra work it places on developers to cleanup the mess is quite fair,  this comminuty has the mandate to peer review such tools and identify which falls short and perhaps provide some helpful guidance to a developer before a slaughter. Implementation is the key to success in all cases of software development.  Standards groups work hard and develop the standard but there is no oversight to impementation, only reccomendations. Which of course is correct, but there is no accountability(QA) of development and practices for those tools which claim the standard. There is no certification or conformace checks. What remains then is peer review which is powerful indeed.  If the developers care abot this gr
 oups opinion, they wil listen and fix their problems, ask for help and perhaps contribute valuable
 data for better standards. 
 
Peer review can perhaps clean up messes ahead of time. If it is broken, do not use it.
 
The excuse for bad code might be nothing more than a young programmers mistake or a misunderstanding of the specification, or some other nonintentional error.  Surely, most mistakes and failures to meet specification requirments are nonintentional.  At least I hope so. 
 
My suggestion is for the group to find compliant tools and use those, help correct the bad tools or simply ban them as nonstandard tools.  I hate to think of all the trial an error experience using available tools that exists in this group goes to waste over nonproductive disputes.


Bill Kearney <[email protected]> wrote:

> I don't think this is neccesarily true.

You're free to disagree.

> things which are
> almost-RSS 1.0, for example - does not neccesarily mean that the tool is
> broken.

Madness. Just plain madness. Have we not drilled this insanity out of
developer's heads already? Why are so many people putting such energies
into working around stupid shit like badly formatted feeds instead of just
fixing them or the tools making them? The latter is a HELL OF A LOT EASIER
than the crap that has to get added to an aggregator to catch them. It's
even easier when people that one would think should know better don't cloud
the issue with excuses.

> but in general we've attempted to encourage Postel's Law: "Be
> liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send."

Do not dress up bad practices by paraphrasing a dead man's intentions.
While I'm all for the idea of avoiding disruptions of the *end user's*
experience I don't think coddling bad developers rises to the intentions
Postel had in mind. It's one thing for a feed tool to try working past a
few trivial errors. It's another (unacceptable) thing to try justifying
that as a baked-in part of the format.

> This part of my previous email was referring to the developers who have
> integrated changes into their tools specifically to support RSS 1.1,
> rather than tools which may, due to peculiarities of coding, support it.
> JabRSS[1] and BottomFeeder[2] have both added support since the release
> of the specification. (BottomFeeder had it within 3 hours.)

And given that it's not even a standardized format presents yet another
range of legacy issues.

-Bill Kearney
Syndic8.com




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Cecelia Hickel
cjhickel-/[email protected]
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