[microformats-discuss] Evaulating RSS per the microformats principles.

[Ryan King]

On Aug 14, 2005, at 3:30 PM, Alf Eaton wrote:
> On 15 Aug 2005, at 00:19, Andreas Haugstrup wrote:
>> Why is that RSS (both XHTML and RSS are XML) document a good place  
>> to store metadata?
>
> Because you can add arbitrary namespaced fields to store metadata,  
> separate from the main content. I'm not saying this is better or  
> worse than microformats embedded in XHTML, but it does exist and  
> can be useful.

See http://tantek.com/log/2005/07.html#d24t1935

>> With HTML I can link to individual entries. That's the power of  
>> permalinks. I can't do that in RSS.
>
> I just linked to an individual RSS entry above (#2).

Given the case that you have an RSS feed with only entry, then yes,  
it can be linked to, which is exactly the straw man that is put forth  
below.

>> Well, I could if I created RSS documents with only one item and  
>> someone created an "RSS browser". But then I'd have to reinvent  
>> the whole web using a different flavour of XML than the one that  
>> has ten years of developement behind it.
>>
>> The way I see it I have two options. I can either create *another*  
>> copy of my content, or I can add a little bit of extra metadata in  
>> the content I already have (using a microformat). I cannot see why  
>> someone would even consider using RSS over HTML as their archive  
>> format.
>
> It depends on your storage format - if you already have the  
> metadata stored in separate fields, then it's easier to present  
> that data in separate fields. If all you have is (X)HTML then it's  
> easier to use microformats to mark up that embedded data.
>
> Creating another copy of your content (dynamically) isn't as hard  
> as you're making it out to be, given the right CMS.

Even if it isn't hard, it shouldn't be necessary.

-ryan