From: Sam Roberts <sroberts@...>
Date: 2004-11-14T02:11:17+09:00
Subject: Re: bug: rss/maker is requiring <image> for rss/0.9

Quoteing jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com, on Sat, Nov 13, 2004 at 03:13:22PM +0900:
> Sam Roberts wrote:
> >It says it is optional here:
> >
> >  http://backend.userland.com/rss091
> >
> >Also, please refer to the DTD here:
> >
> >  http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.91.dtd
> 
> Are you sure that rss/0.9 is not dealing with RSS 0.9?

You wish! You, as a rational person, are crediting the RSS world with
rationality!

rss/maker generates XML with:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <rss version="0.91">
    <channel>
        <title>title</title>
  ...

The version matches the 0.91 DTD:

  version     CDATA #REQUIRED> <!-- must be "0.91"> -->

Actually, I don't know how compliant you have to be, to be compliant,
but

  http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-spec-0.91.html

Says the DOCTYPE is mandatory:

  Files must be 100% valid XML. We're trying to move towards a more
  standard format, and to this end we have included several tags from
  the popular <scriptingNews> format. We have also ensured that this
  version is 100% valid XML. We did this by requiring that a DOCTYPE tag
  be included, and validating each RSS document against that DTD. This
  means that it is not enough for an RSS document to be "well-formed".
  It must also be "valid" with respect to its DTD.  

Example:

  <?xml version="1.0"?>
  <!DOCTYPE rss SYSTEM "http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.91.dtd">
  <rss version="0.91">
  <channel>
  ...

And rss/maker isn't including the DOCTYPE, so I guess its technically
non-compliant there, too. But, who cares?

I just care about image becaue a) its wrong, and b) it silently fails if
I don't have it, and c) I don't actually have a little GIF and a server
to put the little GIF on, so I'm just filling it with garbarge strings,
which RSS viewers are thankfully quietly ignoring when they find out its
garbage.

>    http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.9.dtd
> 
> <!ELEMENT rdf:RDF (channel | image? | item+ | textinput?)*>
> 
> Same issue for the image element, though.

I don't know the history, but looking at 0.9's DTD, I'd say it looks
like 0.9 was an abortive attempt at using namespaces, and being
RDF-based. I think this died because it wasn't backwards compatible, and
was quickly rerleased as 0.91, and that nobody uses 0.9, they use 0.91,
and call it "0.9". Lovely.

Then "1.0' came out, based on RDF, totally incompatible, and everybody
started spitting on each other!

Atom, please, soon.

Cheers,
Sam