 RSS vs. Echo
started 6/29/2003; 5:07:15 AM - last post 7/12/2003; 10:06:26 AM
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Dan Shappir - RSS vs. Echo 
6/29/2003; 5:07:15 AM (reads: 1835, responses: 13)
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| RSS vs. Echo |
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Not quit a PL issue, more of a data format issue, but none-the-less a big brouhaha in blogging circles (to which LtU belong): RSS vs. Echo.
As a side note, given that both are XML, and that they supposedly contain more-or-less the same data, what is the big deal? Couldn't I just create an XSLT, or something similar, that converts one to the other? Couldn't a Reader be made smart enough to pick the most appropriate feed? In other words, should I as a user, or even as a developer, care?
Posted to xml by Dan Shappir on 6/29/03; 5:08:28 AM
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Ziv Caspi - Re: RSS vs. Echo
6/29/2003; 6:40:11 AM (reads: 1200, responses: 1)
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Re creating an XSLT to convert the two: the devil is in the little things, like whether an item should have an ID or not, or how can you tell if the contents of an element is encoded or not. RSS 2.0 is so loosly specified that this brings a lot of headache to existing implementations. Furthermore, it stifles further development of other uses to RSS.
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Dan Shappir - Re: RSS vs. Echo
6/29/2003; 6:46:05 AM (reads: 1206, responses: 0)
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Dan Shappir - Re: RSS vs. Echo
6/29/2003; 8:11:53 AM (reads: 1180, responses: 0)
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Ehud Lamm - Re: RSS vs. Echo
6/29/2003; 8:12:03 AM (reads: 1216, responses: 0)
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the devil is in the little things
These are called "the semantics"...
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Dan Shappir - Re: RSS vs. Echo
6/29/2003; 8:15:08 AM (reads: 1175, responses: 3)
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These are called "the semantics"
Well, according to Sjoerd there are also differences in the nature of the content that can be carried. This makes it more than "just" semantics.
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Ehud Lamm - Re: RSS vs. Echo
6/29/2003; 8:19:52 AM (reads: 1210, responses: 2)
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I was trying to be funny....
Note to self: Never try to be funny in technical discussions.
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Dan Shappir - Re: RSS vs. Echo
6/29/2003; 8:25:34 AM (reads: 1252, responses: 1)
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I didn't realize you were making a joke because my initial response to Echo was that it may be all semantics, hence my comment about XSLT. Sjoerd's post demonstrates that it's more (although in the real-world RSS and Echo may end up being used for the same thing, in which case its will be mostly semantics).
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Ehud Lamm - Re: RSS vs. Echo
6/29/2003; 8:48:24 AM (reads: 1312, responses: 0)
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People often say I need to get a bell, so I can let people know when I am trying to be funny...
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bryan rasmussen - Re: RSS vs. Echo
6/29/2003; 9:57:20 AM (reads: 1159, responses: 0)
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Re creating an XSLT to convert the two: the devil is in the little things, like whether an item should have an ID or not, or how can you tell if the contents of an element is encoded or not
the ID or not is a minor issue, by encoding I suppose you are referring to the habit of passing escaped html tags as the content of an element, often indicated by explicitly declaring content:encoded. Finding out if content is encoded is not per se a difficult thing to discern reasonably well with xslt, doing something about it is nearly insurmountable.
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Chui Tey - Re: RSS vs. Echo
6/29/2003; 1:28:54 PM (reads: 1106, responses: 0)
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Beyond the technical differences, the RSS format as it is is sufficiently useful for most situation. The forking the platform may break old implementations, and at the same time dilute the overall usefulness of the format/concept.
However, the audience of Echo would be fairly technical, and the folks on Echo are doing the right thing this time by not calling it RSS version XXX.
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Ziv Caspi - Re: RSS vs. Echo
6/30/2003; 3:01:49 AM (reads: 999, responses: 0)
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the ID or not is a minor issue
Like Ehud, when I said little things I didn't really mean that they are little.
BTW -- Echo (probably another name will be picked) will very likely turn out to be similar to RSS 2.0 today. This is a good thing: RSS is fundamentally very easy to work with and extend. It has some rough edges that need work, that's all.
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Ehud Lamm - Re: RSS vs. Echo
6/30/2003; 5:59:41 AM (reads: 987, responses: 0)
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Tim Bray (see here): Having a wonderfully readable language is not a win if it's such a pain in the ass to write code for that nobody does...
For a second there I thought he was talking about Ada...
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Ehud Lamm - Re: RSS vs. Echo
7/12/2003; 10:06:26 AM (reads: 775, responses: 0)
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Couldn't I just create an XSLT, or something similar, that converts one to the other?
These seem to answer the question in the affirmative.
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