Subject: What is Atom for?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:33:00 EST

The question in this post's title says it all, I guess. And, No, it isn't 
intended as a flame. I would prefer answers that illuminate, not simply raise the 
temperature. :)

I have been asking myself the question in this post's title recently and 
failing to come up with a totally compelling answer. I guess the Nature article on 
RSS in Science tipped me from the wondering mode to the asking mode. :)

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.

And, looking back at Tim Bray's blog post, "The Atom End-Game", 
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/11/11/AtomInnovation , it didn't seem to be 
referring to the process that the Charter describes.

Hence my fairly fundamental question.

If the answer is clear it shouldn't take long to dispose of the question. If 
the answers are not clear then, in my view, that is an interesting situation 
in itself.

Andrew Watt

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From: Graham <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 16:46:54 +0000

On 16 Dec 2004, at 4:33 pm, [email-masked] wrote:

> 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?

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From: Bill de hÓra <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:11:28 +0000

[email-masked] wrote:

> If the answer is clear it shouldn't take long to dispose of the 
> question. If the answers are not clear then, in my view, that is an 
> interesting situation in itself.

We have never beaten our wives, Andrew ;)

cheers
Bill