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Re: Postel's law, exceptions

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Postel's law, exceptions
• From: James Robertson <jarober@g...>
• Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 14:03:22 -0500
• In-reply-to: <p06010201bc2c7b3c42b7@[192.168.254.4]>
• References: <5.1.0.14.2.20040115101443.03f5f5e0@w...><p06010205bc2c4d3b7399@[192.168.254.4]><830178CE7378FC40BC6F1DDADCFDD1D10190E1B6@R... t.com><CBA00C77-4638-11D8-8ADE-000A95CCC59E@x...><864E88FE-4651-11D8-8ADE-000A95CCC59E@x...><p06010205bc2c4d3b7399@[192.168.254.4]><5.1.0.14.2.20040115101443.03f5f5e0@w...>

see below

At 12:20 PM 1/15/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>At 10:19 AM -0500 1/15/04, James Robertson wrote:
>
>>There's a practical problem with this idea - most aggregators already 
>>deal with RSS, and have started adding support for the early Atom 
>>formats.  As an aggregator author, I can tell you that using a separate 
>>framework for dealing with Atom is not a likely scenario; I'm using the 
>>same code to deal with Atom that I use to deal with RSS.  As such, it has 
>>leniency for things (like illegal characters) for both RSS and Atom.  I 
>>suspect that other aggregator authors either are or will be in the same 
>>boat; asking people to maintain different sets of rules for the two 
>>formats will seem odd to end users, and require some level of extra work 
>>on the part of authors. This is a 'facts on the ground' problem - what do 
>>you suggest as a solution?

Hmm.  For BottomFeeder, I've always used the parser that ships with 
VisualWorks Smalltalk.  What I've done is extend it to be more lenient for 
certain classes of errors.



>I suggest using one of the many high quality, open source XML parsers to 
>process Atom feeds. (Hell, I suggest doing it for RSS.) This is minimal 
>extra work on your part. Take the data produced by the XML parser and feed 
>that into the part of your processing chain that handles the structures 
>rather than using your custom built RSS parser. If your process does not 
>cleanly separate the parsing from the data strcuture building, then you 
>may need to add an additional step where the parse results are morphed 
>into the same internal data structure you use.
>
>The only reason aggregator authors needed to write custom RSS parsers in 
>the first place was because they were trying to parse non-XML documents. 
>If Atom feeds are XML, then use an XML parser.
>--
>
>   Elliotte Rusty Harold
>   elharo@m...
>   Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
>   http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
>   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA
>

<Talk Small and Carry a Big Class Library>
James Robertson, Product Manager, Cincom Smalltalk
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView
jarober@g...

• References:
  • Re: Postel's law, exceptions
    • From: James Robertson <jarober@g...>
  • Re: Postel's law, exceptions
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
  • Re: Postel's law, exceptions
    • From: Michael Champion <mc@x...>
  • Re: Postel's law, exceptions
    • From: Michael Champion <mc@x...>
  • Re: Postel's law, exceptions
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>

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