[XML-SIG] Re: RSS and stuff

[Dan Libby]

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--------------E13B6852273E859CE3A7C91D
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

> * Dan Libby
> |
> | They are important to us. We need to store this stuff in a database.
> | We need to make sure some joker hasn't given us a string that is 20
> | megabytes long,
>
> Sure, but in the original SGML context this wasn't a problem in the
> same way.
>

I'm not sure what you mean here.  Why wasn't it a problem?  Probably because
people were using SGML to transfer "documents", rather than "data", and
possibly because the publishers were always trusted?

> Definitely, and for this very reason I've been advocating that the W3C
> schema language should be extensible, so that the e-commerce and EDI
> communities (and other communities with special needs) can build on
> what's already defined.

Yes!

> | This is where <dc:creator> would be nice...
>

> Ouch, no. <contact-email>, perhaps. Dublin Core doesn't mandate the
> syntax of DC element contents, but using the email address here
> doesn't feel very right.
>

Well, if used correctly in an RDF context, <dc:creator> would just be an
arc-label that refers to a node that represents you.  That node would have
other arc-labels named eg: email-address, first name, last name, country,
etc.

> | We are updating this to support UTF-8 soon, and possibly other
> | encodings.
>
> Hmmm. Which parser(s) are you using?
>

Errg.  xmlproc.  (XMLValParserFactory.make_parser()).  I've been talking to
Jose, our i18n guy, and it sounds like Python is not internally UTF-8
compliant, but he isn't concerned for some reason...

> | If you click on the "Future Directions" link in the quickstart
> | (http://my.netscape.com/publish/help/futures.html), I have an
> | example of the original RSS format I came up with, which does make
> | meaningful use of RDF (channels have IDs, all nodes connect, dublin
> | core is used, etc.)
>
> Hmmm. Maybe there's something about RDF I've missed, but this doesn't
> appear to be correct RDF either. Shouldn't the RDF document be just a
> sequence of RDF statements, with custom elements inside the statements?
>

RDF is about a directed labelled graph.  As long as you comply with that
data model, the actual name of the elements (vocabulary) is secondary. Check
out some of the .rdf's at mozilla.org.  It looks similar.  Also, I validated
it with SirPac (http://www.w3.org/RDF/Implementations/SiRPAC/) and with our
chief rdf guru, guha (whose name appears on xml-schema docs, etc).  (Note:
the version of Sirpac currently installed has a bug that causes the
visualized graph to be disconnected)

> Not at all. Does this mean that I captured your view of RSS correctly?

Well, close.  I removed the ordering dependencies you had, and also added
support for HTML 3.2 entities.  I'll post a draft soon.

-dan


--------------E13B6852273E859CE3A7C91D
Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii;
 name="danda.vcf"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Description: Card for Dan Libby
Content-Disposition: attachment;
 filename="danda.vcf"

begin:vcard 
n:Libby;Dan
x-mozilla-html:TRUE
org:Netscape Communications
adr:;;;Mountain View;CA;94043;USA
version:2.1
email;internet:danda@netscape.com
x-mozilla-cpt:;0
tel;home:650-964-5913
tel;work:650-937-2276
fn:Dan Libby
end:vcard

--------------E13B6852273E859CE3A7C91D--