RSS Sitemaps

Hi,
     I'd like to use a variation of the sitemaps protocol
(http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php
<http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php> ) to enable client RSS readers to
discover all the available feeds in a domain just by referencing the
domain name.

I was going to post this to the Google Webmaster Central sitemaps group
but it appears to be a more of a products support group. I figured that
as I specifically want to enable access to RSS feeds this RSS group
would be a better place to discuss.

So, for the RSS reader example, the user would:
1) enter a domain
2) be presented with a list of all available feeds for the domain
3) select feeds to subscribe to

The RSS reader would:
1) download domain.com/robots.txt
2) discover and download the Sitemap: URL containing an index of indexes
into available site data, eg. feeds index, TV listings index
3) download the feeds index containing actual feeds and further feed
indexes
4) present the list of available feeds to the user

The web site owner would have:
1) published a sitemap-feeds index or a set of indexes in a variant
sitemap-feeds format
2) published a sitemap-index containing a link to the sitemap-feeds
index
3) linked through to the sitemap-index using Sitemap: in the robots.txt
file (see for example http://www.bbc.co.uk/robots.txt
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/robots.txt> )

I have created the following examples to illustrate how I think this
could work:

1) sitemap-index

I see there is a siteindex.xsd here:
http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/siteindex.xsd
<http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/siteindex.xsd>

...and an example here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sitemap.xml <http://www.bbc.co.uk/sitemap.xml>

However, in the RSS reader example, the client app would have to
download and parse each document to find out if the referenced data
relates to RSS feeds. Therefore maybe the sitemap-index format could
contain a namespace element for each entry. The RSS reader could then
understand that a standard sitemap namespace such as
http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/site-feeds means the
referenced URL contains information about feeds and so download the
correct index rather than having to download all files:

<sitemap-index>

  <sitemap>
   <loc>http://www.bbc.co.uk/sitefeeds.xml</loc>
   <lastmod>20090914000000</lastmod>
  
<namespace>http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/site-feeds</names\
pace>
  </sitemap>

  <sitemap>
   <loc>http://www.bbc.co.uk/tvlistings.xml</loc>
   <lastmod>20090914000000</lastmod>
  
<namespace>http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/tvtimes</namespac\
e>
  </sitemap>

</sitemap-index>

2) sitemap-feeds

In the following example there are two actual feeds and two further
indexes.

The namespace and mimetype elements could be optional here except for
further indexes which need the namespace data to instruct the client to
download the additional index list:

<sitemap-feeds>

  <url>
  
<loc>http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/front_page/rss.x\
ml</loc>
   <lastmod>20090914212800</lastmod>
   <title>BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition</title>
   <description>Visit BBC News for up-to-the-minute news...</description>
   <namespace>http://search.yahoo.com/mrss</namespace>
   <mimetype>application/rss+xml</mimetype>
  </url>

  <url>
  
<loc>http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/latest_published\
_stories/rss.xml</loc>
   <lastmod>20090914212800</lastmod>
   <title>BBC News | Latest Published Stories | UK Edition</title>
   <description>Updated every minute of every day</description>
   <namespace>http://search.yahoo.com/mrss</namespace>
   <mimetype>application/rss+xml</mimetype>
  </url>

  <url>
   <loc>http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/news/newsmap.xml</loc>
   <lastmod>20090914210000</lastmod>
  
<namespace>http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/site-feeds</names\
pace>
  </url>

  <url>
   <loc>http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/sport/sportmap.xml</loc>
   <lastmod>20090914210000</lastmod>
  
<namespace>http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/site-feeds</names\
pace>
  </url>

</sitemap-feeds>


Does this make sense?

chris




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