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Re: Postel's law, exceptions

• To: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Subject: Re: Postel's law, exceptions
• From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 20:01:47 -0800
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <r02000200-1028-D1176A3A460611D8AD220003937A08C2@[192.168.124.11]>
• References: <r02000200-1028-D1176A3A460611D8AD220003937A08C2@[192.168.124.11]>

On Jan 13, 2004, at 12:26 PM, Simon St.Laurent wrote:

> This has come up before, but the chant "Postel's law has no exceptions"
> seems to be coming again, in the RSS context.

This has evolved into a useful empirical experiment.  Two of the 
leading aggregator authors (those of NetNewsWire and FeedDemon) have 
stated that for Atom, they will use a real XML parser and require 
well-formedness.  Another, NewsGator, has announced that he will use a 
forgiving parser for Atom.

If Pilgrim and Swartz are correct, we will see the level of malformed 
feeds stay constant, and NewsGator gain market share from the others 
because it is able to read them.  If the Draconian party is correct, we 
will see the number of malformed feeds decline drastically and the 
market share vary as a function of quality and features - NewsGator 
potentially at a disadvantage as he'll have more parsing machinery to 
build and maintain.

Stay tuned -Tim

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    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>

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    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

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