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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: best practice for providing newsfeeds ?
 Perhaps I have trouble understanding your point because you aren't illustrating it clearly. You claim that people complain because posts with dates like "August-2003" appear as new. Considering that that was about 6 months ago I concluded that either you have buggy code or like my toy RSS aggregator when you see dates in weird formats like "August-2003" you fail to parse them and use the current date. Having a publication date and a last updated date would be goodness. It is annoying that the various flavors of RSS have only one date field for items and it is optional. On the other hand, I think having 3 dates as ATOM does is bordering on the ridiculous. -- PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the Earth, minus 40% inheritance tax. ________________________________ From: Bob Wyman [mailto:bob@w...] Sent: Tue 2/3/2004 8:48 AM To: Dare Obasanjo; Joshua Allen; 'Michael Champion'; 'XML DEV' Subject: RE: best practice for providing newsfeeds ? Dare Obasanjo wrote: >It seems you are complaining about people using invalid date formats No. Your comment is a complete distortion of what I wrote. The issue is that RSS only provides for one date (pubDate) which is typically used to indicate an item's "creation date". When an item is updated, it is typically published with its "creation date" -- not the date that it was last modified. So, users get entries that appear to be "old" even when they are "new." This confuses them. The issue here has *nothing* to do with data format -- it is a question of semantics, not syntax. I find it somewhat telling that the author of one of the better RSS aggregators would have trouble understanding this point. This is clearly an illustration of the problems and confusions that can result from a format as poorly specified as RSS. > The main problem with dates in the major RSS specs > is that they are optional. Optionality is an issue which is completely orthogonal to the understanding of those dates that *are* present. If the meaning of a date is ambiguous, it doesn't much matter if it is present or not. bob wyman -----Original Message----- From: Dare Obasanjo [mailto:dareo@m...] Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 2:28 AM To: bob@w...; Joshua Allen; Michael Champion; XML DEV Subject: RE: best practice for providing newsfeeds ? The main problem with dates in the major RSS specs is that they are optional. It seems you are complaining about people using invalid date formats which have nothing to do with the specs given that both major flavors of RSS have well-defined descriptions of what valid dates look like. -- PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the Earth, minus 40% inheritance tax. From: Bob Wyman [mailto:bob@w...] Sent: Mon 2/2/2004 2:24 PM To: Joshua Allen; 'Michael Champion'; 'XML DEV' Subject: RE: best practice for providing newsfeeds ? Joshua Allen wrote: >> original creation. (Atom defines both "created" date and "issued" >> date. This allows the distinction to be made.) > Great, a techie feature. My grandmother certainly didn't ask for that one. Well, other people's grandmothers *did*. Every day I get mail from someone asking: "Why are you telling me that this entry which is dated "August-2003" is "New"? How stupid is your code that it can't read a date!" The lack of metadata in RSS confuses users more than it confuses us. 
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