Subject: Rehashing? Why is link required in entry?

From: Norman Walsh <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 16:40:22 -0500

A quick skim of the last 1000 messages on this list doesn't reveal
recent discussion. Apologies if the issue's been put to bed and I'm
just being clueless.

I'm building an Atom feed for the changes to norman.walsh.name.
Whether you want to track changes to my blog is open to question, but
a feed of changes to a repository I cared about would definitely be of
interest to me.

Here's an example of what I'm generating now:

<entry>
   <title>Revision 20</title>
   <!-- This is a lie. -->
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://norman.walsh.name/"/>
   <id>http://norman.walsh.name/Subversion/R20</id>
   <updated>2005-02-11T12:34:51.027481Z</updated>
   <author>
      <name>ndw</name>
   </author>
   <summary type="TEXT">Fixed URI typo</summary>
   <content type="TEXT">Fixed URI typo

M /2005/02/09/subversion.xml</content>
</entry>

The problem is that link element. Each entry represents a revision
to the repository and that revision doesn't have any alternate
representation.

The options as I see them:

1. I could lie.
2. I could leave it out and not worry about it.
3. I could be devious and use:
      http://norman.walsh.name/atom/subversion.xml#xpointer('/1/2/6')
   Though I'd have to use content type="HTML" then, I think.
4. Actually go and create a representation and point to it.
5. Persuade the WG to make link optional if there's a content construct
   that isn't empty.

I might do 4, just because I want to be compliant and it wouldn't be
that hard, but I would guess that most folks won't do that.

Maybe we've already decided to do 5 and I'm just behind the times.

Otherwise, can I convince the WG to do that? :-)

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <[email-masked]> | I have come to believe that the whole
http://nwalsh.com/            | world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
                              | that is made terrible by our own mad
                              | attempt to interpret it as though it
                              | had an underlying truth.--Umberto Eco

---

From: Danny Ayers <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 23:19:59 +0100

+1 to removing this bit.

[[
4.2  The "atom:head" Element
...
   o  atom:head elements MUST contain at least one atom:link element
      with a rel attribute value of "alternate".
]]

The per-entry link has been dealt with, I suspect the per-feed link
slipped under the net. The rationale is similar.

http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/AtomPubIssuesList
has
http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/PaceContentOrLink
Accepted for Incorporation - Incorporated-Format-04

Abstract
Make atom:link required ONLY IF atom:content is not present. 

-- 

http://dannyayers.com

---

From: Robert Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 17:21:30 -0500

> 5. Persuade the WG to make link optional if there's a content construct

Fortunately, the WG has already been persuaded:

"atom:entry elements that contain no child atom:content element MUST 
contain at least one atom:link element with a rel attribute value of 
'alternate'."

http://www.atompub.org/2005/01/27/draft-ietf-atompub-format-05.html#rfc.section.4.3.p.1

Robert Sayre

---

From: Henry Story <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 23:19:04 +0100

> The options as I see them:

According to some people in this group there is no way you can lie,
since there is no semantics to atom, it is just pure syntax!

For something to be a lie it has to misrepresent the truth, and for
that to happen, there has to be a relation between the vocabulary
given and the world, ie a semantics!

Henry