Subject: Re: What is Atom for?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 13:04:20 EST

In a message dated 12/16/2004 4:49:34 PM GMT Standard Time, [email-masked] 
writes:

> On 16 Dec 2004, at 4:33 pm, [email-masked] wrote:
> 
> >I went back to the Atom Charter, 
> >http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/atompub-charter.html, to see if it 
> >provided clarity of purpose. In my view, it didn't.
> 
> "Atom defines a feed format for representing and a protocol for
> editing Web resources such as Weblogs, online journals, Wikis,
> and similar content"
> 
> That seems pretty clear to me. I'm not sure it matches what the working 
> group had (or has) in mind, but I don't see what's vague about it. Can 
> you expand?

Let's take that one sentence from the Charter, as a starting point.

I can write http://www.tfosorcim.org/blog/ which is a URL which "represents" 
my blog. Fine. But that's not what the Charter is (I assume) suggesting doing. 
So, in what sense will an Atom feed format specification "represent" a Web 
resource?

Let's take the next sentence of the Charter:
"The feed format enables syndication; that is, provision of a channel of 
information by representing multiple resources in a single document.".

Is that what syndication is?

Let's take the next sentence:
"The editing protocol enables agents to interact with resources by nominating 
a way of using existing Web standards in a pattern."

Care to translate, anyone? :)

And the next:
"Atom consists of:
    * A conceptual model of a resource"

Where is this "conceptual model" defined in either the Syndication Format or 
Protocol specifications?

And the next:
"* A concrete syntax for this model"

If the model is not defined how can we know whether this is achieved or not?

And the next:
"* A syndication and archiving format (the Atom
        feed format) using this syntax"

An archiving format? Where in the current drafts is that defined? Why wasn't 
the archiving format mentioned in the first sentence?

I hope, by now, that it is becoming clearer to you that it's not obvious that 
things are "clear" in the Charter.

It is also not clear to me, switching to a more practical level, what I will 
be able to do in, say, 12 months time if Atom 1.0 exists that I can't do 
today. That isn't to say that there is no reason for Atom to exist, simply that its 
purpose and benefits ... "what it's for" ... are not as clear to me at the 
moment as I would like.

And that was the purpose of my original question to try to clarify the silt 
that is muddying the waters in my own perceptions of Atom.

In the past I have found that when I have this muddy thinking about 
fundamental issues relating to a project that it often helps just to express those 
uncertainties as a question. If it's clear and I have been missing something 
obvious then I learn and we can all move on. If, as I suspect in this case, it's 
not quite as clear as some hope then it's better to explore the issues that 
contribute to that lack of clarity, rather than pretending they are not there.

Andrew Watt

---

From: Sam Ruby <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 15:04:07 -0500

[email-masked] wrote:
> my blog.

OK, that got my attention.  In particular, this entry:

http://www.tfosorcim.org/archives/000308.html

What you noted there gives you a bit of credibility in my eyes. 
Hopefully, you will get a chance at some point to give the Atom 
specification as thorough of a reading.

Meanwhile, I'll suggest the following as a place to start the 
conversation on your original question (as reflected in the subject line):

http://intertwingly.net/slides/2003/xmlconf/

Many of the specifics (example: syntax of link elements) have changed 
since that time, but the issues that motivated each change still remain.

- Sam Ruby