[uf-discuss] multiple hatom feeds in one document.. can it work?

[Benjamin Carlyle]

On Mon, 2006-05-08 at 18:58 -0400, Chris Casciano wrote:
> Its something that's kinda been in the back of my mind for a little 
> bit, and I need to do more thinking on it myself, but figured since I 
> haven't had time I'd throw the question out to the group.
> Can multiple hatom feeds in 1 (x)html document "work"?
> Yes, they can be spec'd. Yes they can be marked up. But can they be 
> used and consumed in any way that doesn't create a real mess of things?
...
> Someone want to take a stab at outlining a scenario for how a user 
> might go about subscribing to only 1 feed on a page with 2 hatom feeds? 
> Or how a feed reader might handle being given a URL of an html document 
> with 2 hfeed structures (what if one is left out and assumed to be the 
> body as per spec?)

In my opinion, a page with multiple hatom feeds realy needs to mark them
up with id="" attributes to be useful. A user selects from the feeds
thusly:
http://example.com/feeds#techjobs
http://example.com/feeds#videos
A client's user interface can use descriptions of the feed (as
specifications emerge) to help the user choose something human-friendly.
The alternative would be to treat the order of the feeds on the page as
important:
http://example.com/feeds#xpointer(//hfeed[1])
http://example.com/feeds#xpointer(//hfeed[2])
Named feeds allow for a more durable approach.

Benjamin.