Hi James,
I am afraid I have to side with Graham.
* James Holderness <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-01-17 00:30]:
>>It's crappy assumptions like this that made RSS hellish to
>>work with. Atom is unambiguous. "application/xhtml+xml" means
>>the page content is a full standalone web page.
>
>Not true. Atom *recommends* that the page content is a full
>standalone web page. It's not a requirement.
No. RFC4287 does not merely recommend it, it RECOMMENDS it.
`application/xhtml+xml` is not mentioned in the document at
all, but the pertinent section in 4.1.3.3 says:
4. If the value of "type" is an XML media type [RFC3023] or
ends with "+xml" or "/xml" (case insensitive), the
content of atom:content MAY include child elements and
SHOULD be suitable for handling as the indicated media
type. If the "src" attribute is not provided, this would
normally mean that the "atom:content" element would
contain a single child element that would serve as the
root element of the XML document of the indicated type.
I don’t know about you, but I consider a SHOULD to be pretty
strong language.
Aggregators which process @type='application/xhtml+xml' as if it
was @type='xhtml' are in error. Period.
Now, realworld constraints may mean that aggregators are forced
to do this, because too few people who made the transition from
0.3 to 1.0 took the time to implement the new spec properly.
That’s another matter.
But *the spec* leaves not a shadow of a doubt about what it means
when the type of content is `application/xhtml+xml`.
Thus, content producers who still follow the 0.3 custom are
clearly in error too. Period.
Atom is unambiguous. People may misuse it. That’s the extent of
the story.
Regards,
--
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
