Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: What to do about RSS

Author:Chuck Shotton
Posted:9/3/2000; 4:39:15 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 9/2/2000
Msg #:20758 (In response to 20754)
Prev/Next:20757 / 20759

Chuck, I'm curious -- isn't the point of go'trieve to extract information from WYSIWYG layouts, at least in part?

The problem is that the vast, vast majority of the useful content on the Internet is now in HTML format. Until that data is in a more structured format, like RSS, the only way to use it effectively in an automated way is to read that HTML and turn it into something useful by a computer program. go'trieve actually converts HTML chunks to RSS on the fly. So I'm (hopefully) not too hypocritical when I say that WYSIWG data storage formats are bad.

It's much, much easier to cope with structured XML data than all of the vagueries of (badly written) HTML. That we all have to suffer with the latter isn't going away. But as we've seen, an easy-to-parse format like RSS bridges a huge gap for a lot of computer applications that need to show users a structured view of something elsewhere on the WYSIWG Web.

The concern I have with the latest round of RSS proposals is that it moves RSS away from something that can be parsed with an extremely simple (read, not a full-blown XML) parser to a format that requires a complete, validating parser with support for DTDs and namespaces. That greatly reduces the number of people that can easily implement support for RSS now.

At every turn, it seems the trend is to send XML down the same path that SGML went. The net result is going to be a bunch of people that make careers out of sitting around in working groups, kicking each others' shins, while real-world application developers go wanting for a simple, easy-to-implement standard.

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