Comments on: Why Atom doesn’t use RSS 2.0

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 09:17:08 +0000

But Atom isn’t all that unambiguous itself… it’s still in 0.3

By: Jim Hughes

Jim Hughes — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 21:53:09 +0000

Loud applause from the gallery
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks RSS 2.0 is a naked emperor. RSS 1.0 is just so much saner.

By: Phil Wilson

Phil Wilson — Fri, 05 Dec 2003 17:09:03 +0000

and the point, of course, is that you shouldn’t even *have* to wonder. But as you (almost) say, who the fuck cares when you can use RSS 1.0 and everything just works?

By: Yoz

Yoz — Fri, 05 Dec 2003 01:29:52 +0000

Not quite – it eventually transpired that the problem was not namespaces (which are fine, and recommended by the spec for extensions) but replacing a functional part of RSS 2.0 (pubDate) with something different (dc:date) that does the same thing. The argument says (and I can kind of see this point) why bring in an external type when there’s an internal one that does the job already? Sure, it’s technically valid, but it’s not considered good behaviour. And the response to that… well, see point 1.
What I’m wondering is whether use of *both* pubDate and dc:date is okay.

By: Justin Mason

Justin Mason — Fri, 05 Dec 2003 01:04:47 +0000

Yeah, same here, pretty much; RSS 1.0 works fine for me and is clearly specified, which is what I want to see in a “standard” after all. And I don’t mind namespaces.
‘According to the spec, RSS 2.0 lets you use dc:date instead of pubDate. Except, apparently, it doesn’t let you do it. Or it does, but it’s bad. In fact, I have yet to find a clear answer on whether using dc:date in an RSS 2.0 feed is valid or not. (This is one of those areas of doubt and uncertainty that I mentioned earlier).’
Interesting. So is the use of dc:date bad because it uses a namespace, therefore “funky”, ie. see point 5? (I never bothered figuring all this stuff out.)