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RE: rss regularis(z)ation

• To: "'Mike Champion'" <mc@x...>
• Subject: RE: rss regularis(z)ation
• From: "bryan" <bry@i...>
• Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 10:17:20 +0200
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <oprsow50ntezizxn@localhost>

>Also, RSS should be a poster child for XML namespaces, because everyone
and 
>his dog wants to extend it but keep the core syntax / semantics.
Instead, 
>namespaces are (as Danny Ayers points out elsewhere, can't remember
where 
<offhand) one of the principal cleavage points in the RSS world.  Are
those 
>resisting namespaces just being stupid/stubborn, or are they the
"canaries 
>in the coalmines" dropping over from the toxic namespace fumes? 

Well I would say that there namespace problems, not necessarily toxic,
but I don't think this is at all what the RSS people are suffering from.
One of the things I would want to use namespaces for is to return
namespaced html instead of as you pointed out " the bizarre practice of
CDATA-escaping random HTML-ish text " but this is only starting to be
done now, why was it not done in earlier versions? What were the excuses
for the bizarre practice, the excuse I heard more often that this was an
example of RSS strength, because a user needed to be able to have this
breakable stuff and it was a lot easier for them to find out how to
write &lt;a href='mailto:somebody@s...'&gt; hi&lt;/a&gt; than
any other solution and of course any mention of namespaces brought up
this argument to support doing it the 'bizarre way'.

This always struck me as a form of programmers FUD, where the fear in
question did not in any realistic way seem to be involved with
competitors per se, but rather in admitting that some design decision
way back when, undoubtedly a wrong-headed one, mandated the way things
had turned out, and someday no doubt we'll fix this mess. 

Does all this indicate "something seriously wrong with XML"?  
Again the most serious RSS problem for me is escaped html, as such it
indicates a necessary wrong in any technology, as you are always going
to require a method for escaping characters reserved for your
technology. If people misuse this escaping mechanism I presume it
indicates something seriously wrong with people doing so, at least
wherein their understanding of the technology is concerned. 

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: rss regularis(z)ation
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Re: rss regularis(z)ation
    • From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>

• References:
  • Re: rss regularis(z)ation
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>

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