Microformats Wiki - User contributions [en]

User:Chris Cressman

2010-05-02T17:23:57Z

Chris Cressman: Updating user page to make it generic to avoid future changes

*[http://chriscressman.com/ Chris Cressman] is a web developer in the USA. Contact information, and sometimes more, is on [http://chriscressman.com/ his website].

{{cc-public-domain-release}}

hatom-issues

2009-09-03T18:38:06Z

Chris Cressman: /* Geo */ Supporting 'geo' in hAtom 0.2.

<entry-title> hAtom issues </entry-title>
These are externally raised issues about [[hAtom]] with broadly varying degrees of merit. Thus some issues are REJECTED for a number of obvious reasons (but still documented here in case they are re-raised), and others contain longer discussions. Some issues may be ACCEPTED and perhaps cause changes or improved explanations in the spec.

'''IMPORTANT''': Please read the [[hatom-faq|hAtom FAQ]] and the [[hatom-issues-resolved|hAtom resolved issues]] ''before'' giving any feedback or raising any issues as your feedback/issues may already be resolved/answered.

Submitted issues may (and probably will) be edited and rewritten for better terseness, clarity, calmness, rationality, and as neutral a point of view as possible. Write your issues well. — [http://tantek.com/ Tantek]

== closed issues ==
See: [[hatom-issues-closed]]

== resolved issues ==
See: [[hatom-issues-resolved]]

== issues ==
Please add new issues to the '''bottom''' of the list by copy and pasting the [[#Template|Template]]. Please follow-up to resolved/rejected issues with new information rather than resubmitting such issues. Duplicate issue additions will be reverted.

===2009===
==== too many required hentry properties ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-05-26 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 requires numerous properties for an hentry (often based directly on required elements from the Atom standard). Given the broad variety of situations that hAtom is used in content, many (or even most) of these properties are not already specified in such content, and thus it is poor methodology to require them because there is a good chance (experience has shown) either (a) the content author will ignore the requirement, or (b) will make something up to satisfy the requirement. A few similar/overlapping/sub-issues are noted below (e.g. [[#Author|author is required]], and not always available).
*#* Proposed resolution. Make nearly all hentry properties "optional" in hAtom 0.2. Consider keeping at most only one required property, perhaps "updated" - that is, if there is no date of update/publication in the content you are trying to mark up, then perhaps it doesn't make sense to mark up that content with hAtom, since hAtom is for episodic, time-based/stamped content.
*#** consider pattern abstraction: all microformats should minimize "required" properties for the same reason, and perhaps ''only'' require at most a single property which is indicative of what that microformat is for, that is, if the author does not publish that one required property, then perhaps they should not be using the microformat that requires that one property.
*#* I have the same problem. I'm collecting various feeds to analyse them. The sources are often RSS 0.9, but I want to put the results into an Atom feed. --[[User:Simon Brodtmann|Simon Brodtmann]] 00:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
*#** entry:author should be optional and could be either a hCard or a string
*#** entry lacks a [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php#element.category category] and it shuld either use rel-tag or just be a string
* 2009-07-18 [[User:DavidJanes]] I would like to break this into a separate issue for each currently required element, as we're likely to have to define defaulting rules
* 2009-07-21 [[User:TobyInk|TobyInk]]: Why not have three levels of property: ''required'', ''recommended'' and ''optional''. There would be as few as possible ''required'' properties. Any properties which are needed to create a conformant application/atom+xml feed would be ''recommended''. Everything else would be ''optional''.'
** 2009-07-02 [[User:DavidJanes]] why not then use the RFC MUST, SHOULD and MAY terminology? I think this is a good idea though.
** 2009-09-03 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] +1 to the idea of property "levels" and reusing RFC terminology.

==== entry-title optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
*** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] but not recommended.
*** ... your vote here ...
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model value should be
*** the empty string
**** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** -1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]]
*** the value should not be blank.
**** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] see: [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/#requiredEntryElements Required Entry Elements] from Atom Enabled.
**** [[User:DavidJanes]] what should it be then, if physically representing it is optional? Since Atom makes this a SHOULD and not a MUST (I'm not shouting, just following RFC convention), and we're assuming there's a good reason for the entry-title not to be present in the first place, why not an empty string?
***** [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] entry:title is a required attribute of atom at both feed and entry level, in both instances it says "Contains a human readable title" (a requirement) an empty string is not anything human readable (personal oppinion), maybe hAtom 0.2 should only recommend that the value of entry-title "should" not be an empty string.
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]]

==== updated optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] ... the demand for optionality of the issue is high (cf the microsoft web clips) and if it remains required we're just going to reinvent hAtom without this element
*** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Agree there is demand for optionality. This requirement has previously deterred me from using hAtom.
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model should be
*** the page creation date
**** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]

==== author optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] for the same reason 'updated' should be optional: we'll just reinvent hAtom slightly differently otherwise
*** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Same reason as 'updated' above.
*** ... your vote here ...
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model should be
*** "anonymous" (somewhat like [[hreview]]), except not explicit
**** +0.5 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** 0 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Using a blog post as an example, I can determine the author from surrounding context. 'Anonymous' doesn't seem like an acceptable solution. However, I don't have the technical expertise to create a better solution and would be willing to accept 'anonymous'.
*** make this implementation defined
*** something constructed from the page's URL & other information
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]

=== 2008 ===
==== add url property to hentry ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2008-09-10 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 uses [[rel-bookmark]] for permalinks. Permalinks may not always be hyperlinks or hyperlinkable. Thus I propose we re-use the <code>url</code> property (from [[hCard]], [[hCalendar]], [[hReview]], etc.) as a sub-property of the <code>hentry</code> property/container/root.
*#* Proposed resolution. Add "url" sub-property to "hentry" in hAtom 0.2.
*# {{ToDo}} can anyone provide examples where this would be used? [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== misuse of address element ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2008-06-07 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 says "an Entry Author element SHOULD be encoded in an <code><address></code> element" and "find the Nearest In Parent <code><address></code> element(s) with class name author and that is/are a valid hCard" - this is a misuse of the address element. The address element means the ''contact'' for the page or major portion thereof (see [[hcard-faq#Should_I_use_ADDRESS_for_hCards|hCard FAQ: Should I use ADDRESS for hCards]]), which ''may'' also be the ''author'' but is not necessarily. See [[hcards-and-pages]] for more details on this semantic distinction.
*#* Proposed resolution: Eliminate all requirements and recommended use of the <code><address></code> element from hAtom.
*#** +1 --[[User:Csarven|Sarven Capadisli]] 11:57, 11 Nov 2008 (PST)
*#** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
*#** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Prefer microformat solutions that don't dictate specific elements.
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]

=== 2007 ===
==== marking up comments ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2007-11-25 raised by [http://www.wirewd.com/ Ken Wronkiewicz].
*# There's no currently defined way to exactly handle threaded discussions. I think this is quite useful to have.
*#* The prior art is RFC [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4685 4864]. The microformat solution should map fairly cleanly to this.
* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] I think hAtom Comments should be a separate spec
*** +1 to David's -1. [[User:TobyInk|TobyInk]] They're in a separate RFC, so should be separate to hAtom too. That said, it would be nice if hAtom had a clear, documented mechanism for creating extensions.
** +1 [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]] Comments are the important "next step" for hAtom. The proposal I've seen that I most liked was embedding an hfeed in an hentry.
*** [[User:DavidJanes]] would you look to explicitly write out that proposal here (or in a new section); this is my preferred solution too, but there's another proposal on the table for doing this too

==== atom:category scheme ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2007-06-01 raised by [http://theryanking.com/ Ryan King].
*# ''[[rel-tag#Tag_Spaces|rel-tag tagspaces]] should map to atom:category schemes''
*#* hAtom already defines how to map term and label. It seems that the tagspace can easily map to scheme
*# {{ToDo}} can we get a real-world example mapping of this? [[User:DavidJanes]]

=== 2006 ===
====Geo====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-02-03 raised by [[BrianSuda]]
** We can use the [[geo]] microformat in [[hatom]] to represent GeoRSS element
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] - this is just making explicit a particular composition. is it not? Also: if there's a geo in a hfeed (outside of hentry), should it be considered to apply to all entries?
** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]

==== Relationship of rel-bookmark to url+uid ====
The concept of permalink is available in hCard and hCalendar as the classes url and uid. This combination matches the permalink semantics by indicating that the url should be derefenced to find a more dynamic or up-to-date version of the content, and that that url is a stable unique id that can be used to identify the content.

hAtom 0.1 uses rel-bookmark for the permalink concept. The current state of [[uid-brainstorming]] indicates that the [[hCard]] and [[hCalendar]] permalink concept is likely to be used in subsequent microformats. It may be important to reconcile hAtom with that trajectory. Possible reconcilliations include:

1) To leave things as they are. The two permalink concepts are to be kept separate.

2) Treat the two concepts as equivalent. Allow both in hAtom, and consider allowing both in other formats. eg <a rel="bookmark" href="http://example.com/"> would fill out uid and url values if they are not supplied explicitly.

3) Choose one over the other for hAtom and perhaps for future microformats also. "url uid" allows for some greater freedom (uid can be pointed at a non-url uid), but it is unclear at this stage whether that freedom is warranted or advisable to permit.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] (let's wait for resolution elsewhere, also would need real world examples)
** -1 [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]]

==== Datetime format (atom:updated and atom:published) ====
* 2006-05-23 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** Atom requires the use RFC3339 datetimes, while hAtom 0.1 does not specify which datetime formats may be used.
*** ACCEPTED FAQ - hAtom references datetime-design-pattern, which discusses which date format to use
** 2009-07-20 [[User:DavidJanes]] {{ToDo}} is this moot? can we move this to resolved?

==== Feed id (atom:id) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
*# atom:id is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to.

It is suggested the Feed permalink should be used as the feed ID, however a piece by Mark Pilgrim (http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/28/howto-atom-id) makes arguments against using permalinks and in favour of Tag URIs.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] not enough development of these ideas yes

==== Feed permalink (atom:permalink) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** I'm proposing the following rules:
**# a Feed Permalink element is identified by [[rel-bookmark]] at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# a Feed <del>SHOULD</del><ins>MAY</ins> have a Feed Permalink
**# a Feed Permalink element represents the concept of an Atom link in a feed.
**# if the Feed Permalink is missing, use the URI of the page; if the Feed has an "id" attribute, add that as a fragment to the page URI
** 2006-04-03 [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] - I'm not sure that having a rel-boomkark-able link element at the feed level / to designate a feed in an html page separate for the other content is anything close to normal usage on the web, so I'd be very hesitant on suggesting this element "SHOULD" exist. I'm also curious when this element would link to anything but the current page (or some element on the current page) for this to be useful in the context of the HTML doc. I think taking the "id" on the feed is a more workable solution in most cases.
** 2006-04-03 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: I've replaced "SHOULD" with "MAY".
** 2006-04-24 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Maybe we could simplify my proposal to:
*** "''Use the URI of the page; if the Feed has an "id" attribute, add that as a fragment to the page URI''"
*** IMO this would be good enough for at least 80% of the cases.
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]]: {{ToDo}} can we find an example of this in the wild and if so we should add it to the -examples page.
** [[User:Singpolyma|singpolyma]] 00:05, 13 Apr 2006 (PDT) : since the link is going to be pointing to the home page for the item wouldn't [[rel-home]] make more sense? That's what I'm using in the XOXO Blog Format and my reasoning was that if hAtom ever defined this rel=home made the most sense for what you would add, because the feed's link is not to a part of the site by to the home of the site.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] not enough development of these ideas yes

==== Feed updated (atom:updated) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:updated is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. I'm proposing the following rules:
**# The Feed Updated element is identified by the class name <code>updated</code> at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# If no element with the class name <code>updated</code> is present, use the youngest <code>updated</code> from the feed's entries.
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]] I like this. And the definition of "feed level"
** 2007-06-20 [[User:MikeKaply]] The "youngest" thing is a really bad idea. If a page has 100 hAtom entries, a parser would have to go through all 100 looking for a low date. That's crazy.
*** 2008-03-20 [[User:TobyInk]] Not crazy at all. I've just implemented an hAtom to Atom converter and I do precisely this. Most (useful) hAtom parsers will "go through all 100 entries" anyway, won't they? So why not look for the youngest updated date as part of that loop. The only slight annoyance is that in RFC 4287, the <atom:updated> element must occur before the first <atom:entry> element -- this is easily solved by inserting a placeholder <atom:updated> element, looping through the entries and then going back and filling in the date. This is really, really, '''not''' a difficult thing to implement.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** +0.5 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Feed title (atom:title) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:title is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. I'm proposing the following rules:
**# a Feed Title element is identified by the class name <code><del>entry</del><ins>feed</ins>-title</code>
**# a Feed SHOULD have an Feed Title
**# a Feed Title element represents the concept of an Atom feed title
**# if the Feed Title is missing, use
**#* <del>the first <code><h#></code> element in the Feed, or</del>
**#* the <code><title></code> of the page, or
**#* assume it is the empty string
** 2006-04-01 [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] - I think that the fall back to using the first h# on the page is dangerous.. depending on the pge it may be something that changes often (first h# is a post title) or is otherwise ambiguous. I would think using <code><title></code> before h# would be prefered if not the most common desire of the page author.
** 2006-04-05 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Okay. Deleted "the first <code><h#></code> element in the Feed, or"
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]] Note also in support of this decision that many blogs use <code><h#></code> to encode the date for a group of postings
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]]: why <code>entry-title</code> for the feed title. Why not <code>fn</code> or <code>feed-title</code>?
** 2006-04-12 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Sorry, this was a "copy & paste" mistake. Fixed now.
** 2007-02-26 [[User:MikeKaply|Mike Kaply]]: I think a feed title should be mandatory if an hfeed is present. If you have multiple feeds on a page, there is no way in a user interface to distinguish between different feeds.

==== Feed author and Entry author (atom:author) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** I'm proposing the following rules for Feed author:
**# a Feed Author element is represented by class name <code>author</code> at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# a Feed Author element represents the concept of a Atom author
**# a Feed Author element MUST be encoded in a [[hcard|hCard]]
**# a Feed Author element SHOULD be encoded in a <code><address></code> element
**# a Feed MAY have more than one Feed Author elements
**# if the Feed Author is missing
**#* find the [[algorithm-nearest-in-parent|Nearest In Parent]] <code><address></code> element(s) with class name <code>author</code> and that is/are a valid [[hcard|hCard]]
**#* otherwise <del>the Feed is invalid hAtom</del> <ins>there is no Feed Author</ins>
** I'm proposing the following rules for entry author:
**# an Entry Author element is represented by class name <code>author</code>
**# an Entry Author element represents the concept of an Atom author
**# an Entry Author element MUST be encoded in an [[hcard|hCard]]
**# an Entry Author element SHOULD be encoded in an <code><address></code> element
**#<del> If a Feed has no Feed author each Entry MUST have at least one Entry Author element</del>
**# <ins>If an Entry is enclosed by a Feed and this Feed has no Feed author, each Entry MUST have at least one Entry Author element. If an Entry is not enclosed by a Feed and has no Entry Author:
**#* find the [[algorithm-nearest-in-parent|Nearest In Parent]] <code><address></code> element(s) with class name <code>author</code> and that is/are a valid [[hcard|hCard]]
**#* otherwise the Entry is invalid hAtom</ins>
**# an Entry MAY have more than one Entry Author elements
** [[User:Singpolyma|singpolyma]] 00:11, 13 Apr 2006 (PDT) : feed should not be invalid hAtom if feed-level has no author -- it should be invalid if feed-level has no author AND one or more entries have no author. Also, one or more entries may be missing an author IF feed-level has an author.
** 2006-04-17 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: I replaced "the Feed is invalid hAtom" with "there is no Feed Author"

==== Entry id (atom:id) ====
* {{OpenIssue}}2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:id is required for atom:entry. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. The Entry permalink should be used as the entry id.
** --[[User:Federico|Federico]] 19:52, 25 Apr 2006 (PDT): I would add "Only if the id attribute is not defined for the element that contains the entry". The id attribute can be a tag uri. If you use always use the Entry permalink as the entry id and the Atom feed uses tag uris, you would end with two different ids for the same entry.
** 2006-12-31 response by [[User:ComputerKid|Emanla Eraton]] No, it shouldn't be a permalink. It should be a "tag:" id for entries.
** 2007-06-06 [[RyanKing]] - the syntax of tag URIs and html id attributes are incompatible. HTML disallows forward-slash (/) in ids [http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-name], while tag URIs require them [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc4151.html].

==== Author ====
===== author as an hcard is too much to require =====
The following 3 items were extracted from the conversation starting on irc with [http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-03-24#T152248 logs available starting around here]

* [[User:Fil|Fil]] If, for example, you are programming an "aggregator" of news syndicated from many sources like in [http://sedna.spip.org/sedna/ Sedna], chances are that you don't control what "authors" look like; they can be nicely microformated (if coming from an mf-enabled system), but most probably they will be internally represented by a string that contains, in some random order, a name, and/or an email, and so on. If you want to pass on this information in an hAtom feed, you can't possibly reformat it to an hCard. But you still want to pass it on in a <div class="author"> element.
** [[Tantek]] I don't believe the "can't possibly" statement. Please provide a URL to a concrete example that you think you can't possibly reformat into an hCard so we can all take a look.
** [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] details of Fil's extraction [http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-03-24#T153453 in irc logs] including sting data passed to his app in the form of "Béatrice XXXXXXX beatrice.xxxxxx@@zzzzzzzzz.com"
** [[User:Fil|Fil]] the example url was given up there (Sedna); note that the author information comes from syndication links; nobody is going to edit them to outline what is the name, what is the email and so on, as everything is flowing through automatically... so here the "author" data is dirty, and will not be cleaned into an hCard. We can force it to be in an hCard but it will be meaningless if the source (original data) wasn't built on an mf-enabled software.

* [[pnhChris]] i don't disagree.. the field often comes from places too dumb to follow these rules well; even cases like wordpress that allow users to present their name 1 of 6 or 8 difference ways (from username to LF, FN) .. its not just writing a template to output as hatom at that point... you have to go further upstream where the string to be displayed is chosen .. I also think its pointless to have 10 vcards on the same page whose only data is a generic name like "Chris"
** [[Tantek]] 10 vcards that are the same is pointless yes, but identifying who the author of 10 posts are is not pointless - that's the difference.
** [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] Agreed, but I still have concerns that "author" in hAtom does not always make for good hCards, though the situations where it does is optimal. My comments in the conversation were old comments I've made before over concerns and hardships or the lack of desire to make crappy data more portable, in neither of these cases do I think my two comments alone provide reasons to make change from the hAtom 0.1 spec
***[[User:Phae|Frances]] - Just thought I'd mention a scenario I have where the author of an entry does make a pretty useless vCard - the author in each case is an entire team ("creative team", "technical department") etc., rather than a specific, identifiable, person. Some use may be regained when URL to specific team/information is included, in this circumstance.
****[[User:TobyInk]] - A vCard (thus an hCard) does not have to represent a person -- it could represent an organisation, or a department or team.
* [[User:Fil|Fil]] for the moment, to comply losely with hAtom 0.1, I will use <code><nowiki>My Name</nowiki></code> ; but it's not good
** [[Tantek]] You can actually simplify that (one fewer span) with: <code><nowiki>My Name</nowiki></code>

* require author as [[hCard]] (i.e. no change from 0.1)
** +2 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Entry source (atom:source) ====
* raised by [[User:Kevin Marks|Kevin Marks]]
** When defining hAtom 0.1, atom:source was omitted. We should consider adding this back in as a useful element for providing citations of composite feeds.
*** 2009-07-20 [[User:DavidJanes]] {{ToDo}} we need an example of how this would look in the real world

== Other Questions and Issues ==
General comments, modeling issues, algorithm issues, should have issues, etc. go here.

=== Entry Updated Required? -- Blogger Issue ===
moved to [[hatom-brainstorming]]

=== 'MAY have multiple Feed elements' -- details and viability of multiple feeds ===
moved to [[hatom-brainstorming]]

== pre 0.1 issues ==
'''This section is more or less closed, as hAtom 0.1 is out the door. If there are open issues that you are championing that didn't make it into hAtom 0.1, move them up above to the hAtom 0.2 section'''

See: [[hatom-issues-pre-0.1]]

== Template ==
{{issues-format}}

== See Also ==
* [[hatom|hAtom]] - the draft proposal
* [[hatom-faq]] - knowledge base
* [[hatom-issues-resolved]]
* [[blog-post-brainstorming]]
* [[blog-post-formats]]
* [[blog-post-examples]]
* [[blog-description-format]] - how to describe a blog (as opposed to the individual entries, which is what we're doing here)
* [[mfo-examples]]
* [[naming-principles]]

hatom-issues

2009-09-03T18:36:22Z

Chris Cressman: /* misuse of address element */ Prefer mention of 'address' be removed from hAtom.

<entry-title> hAtom issues </entry-title>
These are externally raised issues about [[hAtom]] with broadly varying degrees of merit. Thus some issues are REJECTED for a number of obvious reasons (but still documented here in case they are re-raised), and others contain longer discussions. Some issues may be ACCEPTED and perhaps cause changes or improved explanations in the spec.

'''IMPORTANT''': Please read the [[hatom-faq|hAtom FAQ]] and the [[hatom-issues-resolved|hAtom resolved issues]] ''before'' giving any feedback or raising any issues as your feedback/issues may already be resolved/answered.

Submitted issues may (and probably will) be edited and rewritten for better terseness, clarity, calmness, rationality, and as neutral a point of view as possible. Write your issues well. — [http://tantek.com/ Tantek]

== closed issues ==
See: [[hatom-issues-closed]]

== resolved issues ==
See: [[hatom-issues-resolved]]

== issues ==
Please add new issues to the '''bottom''' of the list by copy and pasting the [[#Template|Template]]. Please follow-up to resolved/rejected issues with new information rather than resubmitting such issues. Duplicate issue additions will be reverted.

===2009===
==== too many required hentry properties ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-05-26 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 requires numerous properties for an hentry (often based directly on required elements from the Atom standard). Given the broad variety of situations that hAtom is used in content, many (or even most) of these properties are not already specified in such content, and thus it is poor methodology to require them because there is a good chance (experience has shown) either (a) the content author will ignore the requirement, or (b) will make something up to satisfy the requirement. A few similar/overlapping/sub-issues are noted below (e.g. [[#Author|author is required]], and not always available).
*#* Proposed resolution. Make nearly all hentry properties "optional" in hAtom 0.2. Consider keeping at most only one required property, perhaps "updated" - that is, if there is no date of update/publication in the content you are trying to mark up, then perhaps it doesn't make sense to mark up that content with hAtom, since hAtom is for episodic, time-based/stamped content.
*#** consider pattern abstraction: all microformats should minimize "required" properties for the same reason, and perhaps ''only'' require at most a single property which is indicative of what that microformat is for, that is, if the author does not publish that one required property, then perhaps they should not be using the microformat that requires that one property.
*#* I have the same problem. I'm collecting various feeds to analyse them. The sources are often RSS 0.9, but I want to put the results into an Atom feed. --[[User:Simon Brodtmann|Simon Brodtmann]] 00:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
*#** entry:author should be optional and could be either a hCard or a string
*#** entry lacks a [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php#element.category category] and it shuld either use rel-tag or just be a string
* 2009-07-18 [[User:DavidJanes]] I would like to break this into a separate issue for each currently required element, as we're likely to have to define defaulting rules
* 2009-07-21 [[User:TobyInk|TobyInk]]: Why not have three levels of property: ''required'', ''recommended'' and ''optional''. There would be as few as possible ''required'' properties. Any properties which are needed to create a conformant application/atom+xml feed would be ''recommended''. Everything else would be ''optional''.'
** 2009-07-02 [[User:DavidJanes]] why not then use the RFC MUST, SHOULD and MAY terminology? I think this is a good idea though.
** 2009-09-03 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] +1 to the idea of property "levels" and reusing RFC terminology.

==== entry-title optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
*** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] but not recommended.
*** ... your vote here ...
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model value should be
*** the empty string
**** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** -1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]]
*** the value should not be blank.
**** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] see: [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/#requiredEntryElements Required Entry Elements] from Atom Enabled.
**** [[User:DavidJanes]] what should it be then, if physically representing it is optional? Since Atom makes this a SHOULD and not a MUST (I'm not shouting, just following RFC convention), and we're assuming there's a good reason for the entry-title not to be present in the first place, why not an empty string?
***** [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] entry:title is a required attribute of atom at both feed and entry level, in both instances it says "Contains a human readable title" (a requirement) an empty string is not anything human readable (personal oppinion), maybe hAtom 0.2 should only recommend that the value of entry-title "should" not be an empty string.
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]]

==== updated optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] ... the demand for optionality of the issue is high (cf the microsoft web clips) and if it remains required we're just going to reinvent hAtom without this element
*** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Agree there is demand for optionality. This requirement has previously deterred me from using hAtom.
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model should be
*** the page creation date
**** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]

==== author optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] for the same reason 'updated' should be optional: we'll just reinvent hAtom slightly differently otherwise
*** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Same reason as 'updated' above.
*** ... your vote here ...
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model should be
*** "anonymous" (somewhat like [[hreview]]), except not explicit
**** +0.5 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** 0 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Using a blog post as an example, I can determine the author from surrounding context. 'Anonymous' doesn't seem like an acceptable solution. However, I don't have the technical expertise to create a better solution and would be willing to accept 'anonymous'.
*** make this implementation defined
*** something constructed from the page's URL & other information
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]

=== 2008 ===
==== add url property to hentry ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2008-09-10 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 uses [[rel-bookmark]] for permalinks. Permalinks may not always be hyperlinks or hyperlinkable. Thus I propose we re-use the <code>url</code> property (from [[hCard]], [[hCalendar]], [[hReview]], etc.) as a sub-property of the <code>hentry</code> property/container/root.
*#* Proposed resolution. Add "url" sub-property to "hentry" in hAtom 0.2.
*# {{ToDo}} can anyone provide examples where this would be used? [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== misuse of address element ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2008-06-07 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 says "an Entry Author element SHOULD be encoded in an <code><address></code> element" and "find the Nearest In Parent <code><address></code> element(s) with class name author and that is/are a valid hCard" - this is a misuse of the address element. The address element means the ''contact'' for the page or major portion thereof (see [[hcard-faq#Should_I_use_ADDRESS_for_hCards|hCard FAQ: Should I use ADDRESS for hCards]]), which ''may'' also be the ''author'' but is not necessarily. See [[hcards-and-pages]] for more details on this semantic distinction.
*#* Proposed resolution: Eliminate all requirements and recommended use of the <code><address></code> element from hAtom.
*#** +1 --[[User:Csarven|Sarven Capadisli]] 11:57, 11 Nov 2008 (PST)
*#** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
*#** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Prefer microformat solutions that don't dictate specific elements.
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]

=== 2007 ===
==== marking up comments ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2007-11-25 raised by [http://www.wirewd.com/ Ken Wronkiewicz].
*# There's no currently defined way to exactly handle threaded discussions. I think this is quite useful to have.
*#* The prior art is RFC [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4685 4864]. The microformat solution should map fairly cleanly to this.
* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] I think hAtom Comments should be a separate spec
*** +1 to David's -1. [[User:TobyInk|TobyInk]] They're in a separate RFC, so should be separate to hAtom too. That said, it would be nice if hAtom had a clear, documented mechanism for creating extensions.
** +1 [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]] Comments are the important "next step" for hAtom. The proposal I've seen that I most liked was embedding an hfeed in an hentry.
*** [[User:DavidJanes]] would you look to explicitly write out that proposal here (or in a new section); this is my preferred solution too, but there's another proposal on the table for doing this too

==== atom:category scheme ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2007-06-01 raised by [http://theryanking.com/ Ryan King].
*# ''[[rel-tag#Tag_Spaces|rel-tag tagspaces]] should map to atom:category schemes''
*#* hAtom already defines how to map term and label. It seems that the tagspace can easily map to scheme
*# {{ToDo}} can we get a real-world example mapping of this? [[User:DavidJanes]]

=== 2006 ===
====Geo====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-02-03 raised by [[BrianSuda]]
** We can use the [[geo]] microformat in [[hatom]] to represent GeoRSS element
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] - this is just making explicit a particular composition. is it not? Also: if there's a geo in a hfeed (outside of hentry), should it be considered to apply to all entries?
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Relationship of rel-bookmark to url+uid ====
The concept of permalink is available in hCard and hCalendar as the classes url and uid. This combination matches the permalink semantics by indicating that the url should be derefenced to find a more dynamic or up-to-date version of the content, and that that url is a stable unique id that can be used to identify the content.

hAtom 0.1 uses rel-bookmark for the permalink concept. The current state of [[uid-brainstorming]] indicates that the [[hCard]] and [[hCalendar]] permalink concept is likely to be used in subsequent microformats. It may be important to reconcile hAtom with that trajectory. Possible reconcilliations include:

1) To leave things as they are. The two permalink concepts are to be kept separate.

2) Treat the two concepts as equivalent. Allow both in hAtom, and consider allowing both in other formats. eg <a rel="bookmark" href="http://example.com/"> would fill out uid and url values if they are not supplied explicitly.

3) Choose one over the other for hAtom and perhaps for future microformats also. "url uid" allows for some greater freedom (uid can be pointed at a non-url uid), but it is unclear at this stage whether that freedom is warranted or advisable to permit.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] (let's wait for resolution elsewhere, also would need real world examples)
** -1 [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]]

==== Datetime format (atom:updated and atom:published) ====
* 2006-05-23 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** Atom requires the use RFC3339 datetimes, while hAtom 0.1 does not specify which datetime formats may be used.
*** ACCEPTED FAQ - hAtom references datetime-design-pattern, which discusses which date format to use
** 2009-07-20 [[User:DavidJanes]] {{ToDo}} is this moot? can we move this to resolved?

==== Feed id (atom:id) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
*# atom:id is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to.

It is suggested the Feed permalink should be used as the feed ID, however a piece by Mark Pilgrim (http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/28/howto-atom-id) makes arguments against using permalinks and in favour of Tag URIs.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] not enough development of these ideas yes

==== Feed permalink (atom:permalink) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** I'm proposing the following rules:
**# a Feed Permalink element is identified by [[rel-bookmark]] at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# a Feed <del>SHOULD</del><ins>MAY</ins> have a Feed Permalink
**# a Feed Permalink element represents the concept of an Atom link in a feed.
**# if the Feed Permalink is missing, use the URI of the page; if the Feed has an "id" attribute, add that as a fragment to the page URI
** 2006-04-03 [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] - I'm not sure that having a rel-boomkark-able link element at the feed level / to designate a feed in an html page separate for the other content is anything close to normal usage on the web, so I'd be very hesitant on suggesting this element "SHOULD" exist. I'm also curious when this element would link to anything but the current page (or some element on the current page) for this to be useful in the context of the HTML doc. I think taking the "id" on the feed is a more workable solution in most cases.
** 2006-04-03 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: I've replaced "SHOULD" with "MAY".
** 2006-04-24 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Maybe we could simplify my proposal to:
*** "''Use the URI of the page; if the Feed has an "id" attribute, add that as a fragment to the page URI''"
*** IMO this would be good enough for at least 80% of the cases.
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]]: {{ToDo}} can we find an example of this in the wild and if so we should add it to the -examples page.
** [[User:Singpolyma|singpolyma]] 00:05, 13 Apr 2006 (PDT) : since the link is going to be pointing to the home page for the item wouldn't [[rel-home]] make more sense? That's what I'm using in the XOXO Blog Format and my reasoning was that if hAtom ever defined this rel=home made the most sense for what you would add, because the feed's link is not to a part of the site by to the home of the site.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] not enough development of these ideas yes

==== Feed updated (atom:updated) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:updated is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. I'm proposing the following rules:
**# The Feed Updated element is identified by the class name <code>updated</code> at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# If no element with the class name <code>updated</code> is present, use the youngest <code>updated</code> from the feed's entries.
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]] I like this. And the definition of "feed level"
** 2007-06-20 [[User:MikeKaply]] The "youngest" thing is a really bad idea. If a page has 100 hAtom entries, a parser would have to go through all 100 looking for a low date. That's crazy.
*** 2008-03-20 [[User:TobyInk]] Not crazy at all. I've just implemented an hAtom to Atom converter and I do precisely this. Most (useful) hAtom parsers will "go through all 100 entries" anyway, won't they? So why not look for the youngest updated date as part of that loop. The only slight annoyance is that in RFC 4287, the <atom:updated> element must occur before the first <atom:entry> element -- this is easily solved by inserting a placeholder <atom:updated> element, looping through the entries and then going back and filling in the date. This is really, really, '''not''' a difficult thing to implement.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** +0.5 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Feed title (atom:title) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:title is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. I'm proposing the following rules:
**# a Feed Title element is identified by the class name <code><del>entry</del><ins>feed</ins>-title</code>
**# a Feed SHOULD have an Feed Title
**# a Feed Title element represents the concept of an Atom feed title
**# if the Feed Title is missing, use
**#* <del>the first <code><h#></code> element in the Feed, or</del>
**#* the <code><title></code> of the page, or
**#* assume it is the empty string
** 2006-04-01 [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] - I think that the fall back to using the first h# on the page is dangerous.. depending on the pge it may be something that changes often (first h# is a post title) or is otherwise ambiguous. I would think using <code><title></code> before h# would be prefered if not the most common desire of the page author.
** 2006-04-05 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Okay. Deleted "the first <code><h#></code> element in the Feed, or"
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]] Note also in support of this decision that many blogs use <code><h#></code> to encode the date for a group of postings
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]]: why <code>entry-title</code> for the feed title. Why not <code>fn</code> or <code>feed-title</code>?
** 2006-04-12 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Sorry, this was a "copy & paste" mistake. Fixed now.
** 2007-02-26 [[User:MikeKaply|Mike Kaply]]: I think a feed title should be mandatory if an hfeed is present. If you have multiple feeds on a page, there is no way in a user interface to distinguish between different feeds.

==== Feed author and Entry author (atom:author) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** I'm proposing the following rules for Feed author:
**# a Feed Author element is represented by class name <code>author</code> at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# a Feed Author element represents the concept of a Atom author
**# a Feed Author element MUST be encoded in a [[hcard|hCard]]
**# a Feed Author element SHOULD be encoded in a <code><address></code> element
**# a Feed MAY have more than one Feed Author elements
**# if the Feed Author is missing
**#* find the [[algorithm-nearest-in-parent|Nearest In Parent]] <code><address></code> element(s) with class name <code>author</code> and that is/are a valid [[hcard|hCard]]
**#* otherwise <del>the Feed is invalid hAtom</del> <ins>there is no Feed Author</ins>
** I'm proposing the following rules for entry author:
**# an Entry Author element is represented by class name <code>author</code>
**# an Entry Author element represents the concept of an Atom author
**# an Entry Author element MUST be encoded in an [[hcard|hCard]]
**# an Entry Author element SHOULD be encoded in an <code><address></code> element
**#<del> If a Feed has no Feed author each Entry MUST have at least one Entry Author element</del>
**# <ins>If an Entry is enclosed by a Feed and this Feed has no Feed author, each Entry MUST have at least one Entry Author element. If an Entry is not enclosed by a Feed and has no Entry Author:
**#* find the [[algorithm-nearest-in-parent|Nearest In Parent]] <code><address></code> element(s) with class name <code>author</code> and that is/are a valid [[hcard|hCard]]
**#* otherwise the Entry is invalid hAtom</ins>
**# an Entry MAY have more than one Entry Author elements
** [[User:Singpolyma|singpolyma]] 00:11, 13 Apr 2006 (PDT) : feed should not be invalid hAtom if feed-level has no author -- it should be invalid if feed-level has no author AND one or more entries have no author. Also, one or more entries may be missing an author IF feed-level has an author.
** 2006-04-17 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: I replaced "the Feed is invalid hAtom" with "there is no Feed Author"

==== Entry id (atom:id) ====
* {{OpenIssue}}2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:id is required for atom:entry. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. The Entry permalink should be used as the entry id.
** --[[User:Federico|Federico]] 19:52, 25 Apr 2006 (PDT): I would add "Only if the id attribute is not defined for the element that contains the entry". The id attribute can be a tag uri. If you use always use the Entry permalink as the entry id and the Atom feed uses tag uris, you would end with two different ids for the same entry.
** 2006-12-31 response by [[User:ComputerKid|Emanla Eraton]] No, it shouldn't be a permalink. It should be a "tag:" id for entries.
** 2007-06-06 [[RyanKing]] - the syntax of tag URIs and html id attributes are incompatible. HTML disallows forward-slash (/) in ids [http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-name], while tag URIs require them [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc4151.html].

==== Author ====
===== author as an hcard is too much to require =====
The following 3 items were extracted from the conversation starting on irc with [http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-03-24#T152248 logs available starting around here]

* [[User:Fil|Fil]] If, for example, you are programming an "aggregator" of news syndicated from many sources like in [http://sedna.spip.org/sedna/ Sedna], chances are that you don't control what "authors" look like; they can be nicely microformated (if coming from an mf-enabled system), but most probably they will be internally represented by a string that contains, in some random order, a name, and/or an email, and so on. If you want to pass on this information in an hAtom feed, you can't possibly reformat it to an hCard. But you still want to pass it on in a <div class="author"> element.
** [[Tantek]] I don't believe the "can't possibly" statement. Please provide a URL to a concrete example that you think you can't possibly reformat into an hCard so we can all take a look.
** [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] details of Fil's extraction [http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-03-24#T153453 in irc logs] including sting data passed to his app in the form of "Béatrice XXXXXXX beatrice.xxxxxx@@zzzzzzzzz.com"
** [[User:Fil|Fil]] the example url was given up there (Sedna); note that the author information comes from syndication links; nobody is going to edit them to outline what is the name, what is the email and so on, as everything is flowing through automatically... so here the "author" data is dirty, and will not be cleaned into an hCard. We can force it to be in an hCard but it will be meaningless if the source (original data) wasn't built on an mf-enabled software.

* [[pnhChris]] i don't disagree.. the field often comes from places too dumb to follow these rules well; even cases like wordpress that allow users to present their name 1 of 6 or 8 difference ways (from username to LF, FN) .. its not just writing a template to output as hatom at that point... you have to go further upstream where the string to be displayed is chosen .. I also think its pointless to have 10 vcards on the same page whose only data is a generic name like "Chris"
** [[Tantek]] 10 vcards that are the same is pointless yes, but identifying who the author of 10 posts are is not pointless - that's the difference.
** [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] Agreed, but I still have concerns that "author" in hAtom does not always make for good hCards, though the situations where it does is optimal. My comments in the conversation were old comments I've made before over concerns and hardships or the lack of desire to make crappy data more portable, in neither of these cases do I think my two comments alone provide reasons to make change from the hAtom 0.1 spec
***[[User:Phae|Frances]] - Just thought I'd mention a scenario I have where the author of an entry does make a pretty useless vCard - the author in each case is an entire team ("creative team", "technical department") etc., rather than a specific, identifiable, person. Some use may be regained when URL to specific team/information is included, in this circumstance.
****[[User:TobyInk]] - A vCard (thus an hCard) does not have to represent a person -- it could represent an organisation, or a department or team.
* [[User:Fil|Fil]] for the moment, to comply losely with hAtom 0.1, I will use <code><nowiki>My Name</nowiki></code> ; but it's not good
** [[Tantek]] You can actually simplify that (one fewer span) with: <code><nowiki>My Name</nowiki></code>

* require author as [[hCard]] (i.e. no change from 0.1)
** +2 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Entry source (atom:source) ====
* raised by [[User:Kevin Marks|Kevin Marks]]
** When defining hAtom 0.1, atom:source was omitted. We should consider adding this back in as a useful element for providing citations of composite feeds.
*** 2009-07-20 [[User:DavidJanes]] {{ToDo}} we need an example of how this would look in the real world

== Other Questions and Issues ==
General comments, modeling issues, algorithm issues, should have issues, etc. go here.

=== Entry Updated Required? -- Blogger Issue ===
moved to [[hatom-brainstorming]]

=== 'MAY have multiple Feed elements' -- details and viability of multiple feeds ===
moved to [[hatom-brainstorming]]

== pre 0.1 issues ==
'''This section is more or less closed, as hAtom 0.1 is out the door. If there are open issues that you are championing that didn't make it into hAtom 0.1, move them up above to the hAtom 0.2 section'''

See: [[hatom-issues-pre-0.1]]

== Template ==
{{issues-format}}

== See Also ==
* [[hatom|hAtom]] - the draft proposal
* [[hatom-faq]] - knowledge base
* [[hatom-issues-resolved]]
* [[blog-post-brainstorming]]
* [[blog-post-formats]]
* [[blog-post-examples]]
* [[blog-description-format]] - how to describe a blog (as opposed to the individual entries, which is what we're doing here)
* [[mfo-examples]]
* [[naming-principles]]

hatom-issues

2009-09-03T18:32:42Z

Chris Cressman: /* updated optionality */ Supporting inclusion in hAtom 0.2

<entry-title> hAtom issues </entry-title>
These are externally raised issues about [[hAtom]] with broadly varying degrees of merit. Thus some issues are REJECTED for a number of obvious reasons (but still documented here in case they are re-raised), and others contain longer discussions. Some issues may be ACCEPTED and perhaps cause changes or improved explanations in the spec.

'''IMPORTANT''': Please read the [[hatom-faq|hAtom FAQ]] and the [[hatom-issues-resolved|hAtom resolved issues]] ''before'' giving any feedback or raising any issues as your feedback/issues may already be resolved/answered.

Submitted issues may (and probably will) be edited and rewritten for better terseness, clarity, calmness, rationality, and as neutral a point of view as possible. Write your issues well. — [http://tantek.com/ Tantek]

== closed issues ==
See: [[hatom-issues-closed]]

== resolved issues ==
See: [[hatom-issues-resolved]]

== issues ==
Please add new issues to the '''bottom''' of the list by copy and pasting the [[#Template|Template]]. Please follow-up to resolved/rejected issues with new information rather than resubmitting such issues. Duplicate issue additions will be reverted.

===2009===
==== too many required hentry properties ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-05-26 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 requires numerous properties for an hentry (often based directly on required elements from the Atom standard). Given the broad variety of situations that hAtom is used in content, many (or even most) of these properties are not already specified in such content, and thus it is poor methodology to require them because there is a good chance (experience has shown) either (a) the content author will ignore the requirement, or (b) will make something up to satisfy the requirement. A few similar/overlapping/sub-issues are noted below (e.g. [[#Author|author is required]], and not always available).
*#* Proposed resolution. Make nearly all hentry properties "optional" in hAtom 0.2. Consider keeping at most only one required property, perhaps "updated" - that is, if there is no date of update/publication in the content you are trying to mark up, then perhaps it doesn't make sense to mark up that content with hAtom, since hAtom is for episodic, time-based/stamped content.
*#** consider pattern abstraction: all microformats should minimize "required" properties for the same reason, and perhaps ''only'' require at most a single property which is indicative of what that microformat is for, that is, if the author does not publish that one required property, then perhaps they should not be using the microformat that requires that one property.
*#* I have the same problem. I'm collecting various feeds to analyse them. The sources are often RSS 0.9, but I want to put the results into an Atom feed. --[[User:Simon Brodtmann|Simon Brodtmann]] 00:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
*#** entry:author should be optional and could be either a hCard or a string
*#** entry lacks a [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php#element.category category] and it shuld either use rel-tag or just be a string
* 2009-07-18 [[User:DavidJanes]] I would like to break this into a separate issue for each currently required element, as we're likely to have to define defaulting rules
* 2009-07-21 [[User:TobyInk|TobyInk]]: Why not have three levels of property: ''required'', ''recommended'' and ''optional''. There would be as few as possible ''required'' properties. Any properties which are needed to create a conformant application/atom+xml feed would be ''recommended''. Everything else would be ''optional''.'
** 2009-07-02 [[User:DavidJanes]] why not then use the RFC MUST, SHOULD and MAY terminology? I think this is a good idea though.
** 2009-09-03 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] +1 to the idea of property "levels" and reusing RFC terminology.

==== entry-title optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
*** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] but not recommended.
*** ... your vote here ...
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model value should be
*** the empty string
**** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** -1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]]
*** the value should not be blank.
**** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] see: [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/#requiredEntryElements Required Entry Elements] from Atom Enabled.
**** [[User:DavidJanes]] what should it be then, if physically representing it is optional? Since Atom makes this a SHOULD and not a MUST (I'm not shouting, just following RFC convention), and we're assuming there's a good reason for the entry-title not to be present in the first place, why not an empty string?
***** [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] entry:title is a required attribute of atom at both feed and entry level, in both instances it says "Contains a human readable title" (a requirement) an empty string is not anything human readable (personal oppinion), maybe hAtom 0.2 should only recommend that the value of entry-title "should" not be an empty string.
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]]

==== updated optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] ... the demand for optionality of the issue is high (cf the microsoft web clips) and if it remains required we're just going to reinvent hAtom without this element
*** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Agree there is demand for optionality. This requirement has previously deterred me from using hAtom.
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model should be
*** the page creation date
**** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]

==== author optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] for the same reason 'updated' should be optional: we'll just reinvent hAtom slightly differently otherwise
*** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Same reason as 'updated' above.
*** ... your vote here ...
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model should be
*** "anonymous" (somewhat like [[hreview]]), except not explicit
**** +0.5 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** 0 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Using a blog post as an example, I can determine the author from surrounding context. 'Anonymous' doesn't seem like an acceptable solution. However, I don't have the technical expertise to create a better solution and would be willing to accept 'anonymous'.
*** make this implementation defined
*** something constructed from the page's URL & other information
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]

=== 2008 ===
==== add url property to hentry ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2008-09-10 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 uses [[rel-bookmark]] for permalinks. Permalinks may not always be hyperlinks or hyperlinkable. Thus I propose we re-use the <code>url</code> property (from [[hCard]], [[hCalendar]], [[hReview]], etc.) as a sub-property of the <code>hentry</code> property/container/root.
*#* Proposed resolution. Add "url" sub-property to "hentry" in hAtom 0.2.
*# {{ToDo}} can anyone provide examples where this would be used? [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== misuse of address element ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2008-06-07 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 says "an Entry Author element SHOULD be encoded in an <code><address></code> element" and "find the Nearest In Parent <code><address></code> element(s) with class name author and that is/are a valid hCard" - this is a misuse of the address element. The address element means the ''contact'' for the page or major portion thereof (see [[hcard-faq#Should_I_use_ADDRESS_for_hCards|hCard FAQ: Should I use ADDRESS for hCards]]), which ''may'' also be the ''author'' but is not necessarily. See [[hcards-and-pages]] for more details on this semantic distinction.
*#* Proposed resolution: Eliminate all requirements and recommended use of the <code><address></code> element from hAtom.
*#** +1 --[[User:Csarven|Sarven Capadisli]] 11:57, 11 Nov 2008 (PST)
*#** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

=== 2007 ===
==== marking up comments ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2007-11-25 raised by [http://www.wirewd.com/ Ken Wronkiewicz].
*# There's no currently defined way to exactly handle threaded discussions. I think this is quite useful to have.
*#* The prior art is RFC [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4685 4864]. The microformat solution should map fairly cleanly to this.
* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] I think hAtom Comments should be a separate spec
*** +1 to David's -1. [[User:TobyInk|TobyInk]] They're in a separate RFC, so should be separate to hAtom too. That said, it would be nice if hAtom had a clear, documented mechanism for creating extensions.
** +1 [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]] Comments are the important "next step" for hAtom. The proposal I've seen that I most liked was embedding an hfeed in an hentry.
*** [[User:DavidJanes]] would you look to explicitly write out that proposal here (or in a new section); this is my preferred solution too, but there's another proposal on the table for doing this too

==== atom:category scheme ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2007-06-01 raised by [http://theryanking.com/ Ryan King].
*# ''[[rel-tag#Tag_Spaces|rel-tag tagspaces]] should map to atom:category schemes''
*#* hAtom already defines how to map term and label. It seems that the tagspace can easily map to scheme
*# {{ToDo}} can we get a real-world example mapping of this? [[User:DavidJanes]]

=== 2006 ===
====Geo====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-02-03 raised by [[BrianSuda]]
** We can use the [[geo]] microformat in [[hatom]] to represent GeoRSS element
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] - this is just making explicit a particular composition. is it not? Also: if there's a geo in a hfeed (outside of hentry), should it be considered to apply to all entries?
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Relationship of rel-bookmark to url+uid ====
The concept of permalink is available in hCard and hCalendar as the classes url and uid. This combination matches the permalink semantics by indicating that the url should be derefenced to find a more dynamic or up-to-date version of the content, and that that url is a stable unique id that can be used to identify the content.

hAtom 0.1 uses rel-bookmark for the permalink concept. The current state of [[uid-brainstorming]] indicates that the [[hCard]] and [[hCalendar]] permalink concept is likely to be used in subsequent microformats. It may be important to reconcile hAtom with that trajectory. Possible reconcilliations include:

1) To leave things as they are. The two permalink concepts are to be kept separate.

2) Treat the two concepts as equivalent. Allow both in hAtom, and consider allowing both in other formats. eg <a rel="bookmark" href="http://example.com/"> would fill out uid and url values if they are not supplied explicitly.

3) Choose one over the other for hAtom and perhaps for future microformats also. "url uid" allows for some greater freedom (uid can be pointed at a non-url uid), but it is unclear at this stage whether that freedom is warranted or advisable to permit.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] (let's wait for resolution elsewhere, also would need real world examples)
** -1 [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]]

==== Datetime format (atom:updated and atom:published) ====
* 2006-05-23 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** Atom requires the use RFC3339 datetimes, while hAtom 0.1 does not specify which datetime formats may be used.
*** ACCEPTED FAQ - hAtom references datetime-design-pattern, which discusses which date format to use
** 2009-07-20 [[User:DavidJanes]] {{ToDo}} is this moot? can we move this to resolved?

==== Feed id (atom:id) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
*# atom:id is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to.

It is suggested the Feed permalink should be used as the feed ID, however a piece by Mark Pilgrim (http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/28/howto-atom-id) makes arguments against using permalinks and in favour of Tag URIs.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] not enough development of these ideas yes

==== Feed permalink (atom:permalink) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** I'm proposing the following rules:
**# a Feed Permalink element is identified by [[rel-bookmark]] at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# a Feed <del>SHOULD</del><ins>MAY</ins> have a Feed Permalink
**# a Feed Permalink element represents the concept of an Atom link in a feed.
**# if the Feed Permalink is missing, use the URI of the page; if the Feed has an "id" attribute, add that as a fragment to the page URI
** 2006-04-03 [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] - I'm not sure that having a rel-boomkark-able link element at the feed level / to designate a feed in an html page separate for the other content is anything close to normal usage on the web, so I'd be very hesitant on suggesting this element "SHOULD" exist. I'm also curious when this element would link to anything but the current page (or some element on the current page) for this to be useful in the context of the HTML doc. I think taking the "id" on the feed is a more workable solution in most cases.
** 2006-04-03 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: I've replaced "SHOULD" with "MAY".
** 2006-04-24 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Maybe we could simplify my proposal to:
*** "''Use the URI of the page; if the Feed has an "id" attribute, add that as a fragment to the page URI''"
*** IMO this would be good enough for at least 80% of the cases.
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]]: {{ToDo}} can we find an example of this in the wild and if so we should add it to the -examples page.
** [[User:Singpolyma|singpolyma]] 00:05, 13 Apr 2006 (PDT) : since the link is going to be pointing to the home page for the item wouldn't [[rel-home]] make more sense? That's what I'm using in the XOXO Blog Format and my reasoning was that if hAtom ever defined this rel=home made the most sense for what you would add, because the feed's link is not to a part of the site by to the home of the site.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] not enough development of these ideas yes

==== Feed updated (atom:updated) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:updated is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. I'm proposing the following rules:
**# The Feed Updated element is identified by the class name <code>updated</code> at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# If no element with the class name <code>updated</code> is present, use the youngest <code>updated</code> from the feed's entries.
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]] I like this. And the definition of "feed level"
** 2007-06-20 [[User:MikeKaply]] The "youngest" thing is a really bad idea. If a page has 100 hAtom entries, a parser would have to go through all 100 looking for a low date. That's crazy.
*** 2008-03-20 [[User:TobyInk]] Not crazy at all. I've just implemented an hAtom to Atom converter and I do precisely this. Most (useful) hAtom parsers will "go through all 100 entries" anyway, won't they? So why not look for the youngest updated date as part of that loop. The only slight annoyance is that in RFC 4287, the <atom:updated> element must occur before the first <atom:entry> element -- this is easily solved by inserting a placeholder <atom:updated> element, looping through the entries and then going back and filling in the date. This is really, really, '''not''' a difficult thing to implement.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** +0.5 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Feed title (atom:title) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:title is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. I'm proposing the following rules:
**# a Feed Title element is identified by the class name <code><del>entry</del><ins>feed</ins>-title</code>
**# a Feed SHOULD have an Feed Title
**# a Feed Title element represents the concept of an Atom feed title
**# if the Feed Title is missing, use
**#* <del>the first <code><h#></code> element in the Feed, or</del>
**#* the <code><title></code> of the page, or
**#* assume it is the empty string
** 2006-04-01 [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] - I think that the fall back to using the first h# on the page is dangerous.. depending on the pge it may be something that changes often (first h# is a post title) or is otherwise ambiguous. I would think using <code><title></code> before h# would be prefered if not the most common desire of the page author.
** 2006-04-05 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Okay. Deleted "the first <code><h#></code> element in the Feed, or"
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]] Note also in support of this decision that many blogs use <code><h#></code> to encode the date for a group of postings
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]]: why <code>entry-title</code> for the feed title. Why not <code>fn</code> or <code>feed-title</code>?
** 2006-04-12 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Sorry, this was a "copy & paste" mistake. Fixed now.
** 2007-02-26 [[User:MikeKaply|Mike Kaply]]: I think a feed title should be mandatory if an hfeed is present. If you have multiple feeds on a page, there is no way in a user interface to distinguish between different feeds.

==== Feed author and Entry author (atom:author) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** I'm proposing the following rules for Feed author:
**# a Feed Author element is represented by class name <code>author</code> at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# a Feed Author element represents the concept of a Atom author
**# a Feed Author element MUST be encoded in a [[hcard|hCard]]
**# a Feed Author element SHOULD be encoded in a <code><address></code> element
**# a Feed MAY have more than one Feed Author elements
**# if the Feed Author is missing
**#* find the [[algorithm-nearest-in-parent|Nearest In Parent]] <code><address></code> element(s) with class name <code>author</code> and that is/are a valid [[hcard|hCard]]
**#* otherwise <del>the Feed is invalid hAtom</del> <ins>there is no Feed Author</ins>
** I'm proposing the following rules for entry author:
**# an Entry Author element is represented by class name <code>author</code>
**# an Entry Author element represents the concept of an Atom author
**# an Entry Author element MUST be encoded in an [[hcard|hCard]]
**# an Entry Author element SHOULD be encoded in an <code><address></code> element
**#<del> If a Feed has no Feed author each Entry MUST have at least one Entry Author element</del>
**# <ins>If an Entry is enclosed by a Feed and this Feed has no Feed author, each Entry MUST have at least one Entry Author element. If an Entry is not enclosed by a Feed and has no Entry Author:
**#* find the [[algorithm-nearest-in-parent|Nearest In Parent]] <code><address></code> element(s) with class name <code>author</code> and that is/are a valid [[hcard|hCard]]
**#* otherwise the Entry is invalid hAtom</ins>
**# an Entry MAY have more than one Entry Author elements
** [[User:Singpolyma|singpolyma]] 00:11, 13 Apr 2006 (PDT) : feed should not be invalid hAtom if feed-level has no author -- it should be invalid if feed-level has no author AND one or more entries have no author. Also, one or more entries may be missing an author IF feed-level has an author.
** 2006-04-17 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: I replaced "the Feed is invalid hAtom" with "there is no Feed Author"

==== Entry id (atom:id) ====
* {{OpenIssue}}2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:id is required for atom:entry. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. The Entry permalink should be used as the entry id.
** --[[User:Federico|Federico]] 19:52, 25 Apr 2006 (PDT): I would add "Only if the id attribute is not defined for the element that contains the entry". The id attribute can be a tag uri. If you use always use the Entry permalink as the entry id and the Atom feed uses tag uris, you would end with two different ids for the same entry.
** 2006-12-31 response by [[User:ComputerKid|Emanla Eraton]] No, it shouldn't be a permalink. It should be a "tag:" id for entries.
** 2007-06-06 [[RyanKing]] - the syntax of tag URIs and html id attributes are incompatible. HTML disallows forward-slash (/) in ids [http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-name], while tag URIs require them [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc4151.html].

==== Author ====
===== author as an hcard is too much to require =====
The following 3 items were extracted from the conversation starting on irc with [http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-03-24#T152248 logs available starting around here]

* [[User:Fil|Fil]] If, for example, you are programming an "aggregator" of news syndicated from many sources like in [http://sedna.spip.org/sedna/ Sedna], chances are that you don't control what "authors" look like; they can be nicely microformated (if coming from an mf-enabled system), but most probably they will be internally represented by a string that contains, in some random order, a name, and/or an email, and so on. If you want to pass on this information in an hAtom feed, you can't possibly reformat it to an hCard. But you still want to pass it on in a <div class="author"> element.
** [[Tantek]] I don't believe the "can't possibly" statement. Please provide a URL to a concrete example that you think you can't possibly reformat into an hCard so we can all take a look.
** [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] details of Fil's extraction [http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-03-24#T153453 in irc logs] including sting data passed to his app in the form of "Béatrice XXXXXXX beatrice.xxxxxx@@zzzzzzzzz.com"
** [[User:Fil|Fil]] the example url was given up there (Sedna); note that the author information comes from syndication links; nobody is going to edit them to outline what is the name, what is the email and so on, as everything is flowing through automatically... so here the "author" data is dirty, and will not be cleaned into an hCard. We can force it to be in an hCard but it will be meaningless if the source (original data) wasn't built on an mf-enabled software.

* [[pnhChris]] i don't disagree.. the field often comes from places too dumb to follow these rules well; even cases like wordpress that allow users to present their name 1 of 6 or 8 difference ways (from username to LF, FN) .. its not just writing a template to output as hatom at that point... you have to go further upstream where the string to be displayed is chosen .. I also think its pointless to have 10 vcards on the same page whose only data is a generic name like "Chris"
** [[Tantek]] 10 vcards that are the same is pointless yes, but identifying who the author of 10 posts are is not pointless - that's the difference.
** [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] Agreed, but I still have concerns that "author" in hAtom does not always make for good hCards, though the situations where it does is optimal. My comments in the conversation were old comments I've made before over concerns and hardships or the lack of desire to make crappy data more portable, in neither of these cases do I think my two comments alone provide reasons to make change from the hAtom 0.1 spec
***[[User:Phae|Frances]] - Just thought I'd mention a scenario I have where the author of an entry does make a pretty useless vCard - the author in each case is an entire team ("creative team", "technical department") etc., rather than a specific, identifiable, person. Some use may be regained when URL to specific team/information is included, in this circumstance.
****[[User:TobyInk]] - A vCard (thus an hCard) does not have to represent a person -- it could represent an organisation, or a department or team.
* [[User:Fil|Fil]] for the moment, to comply losely with hAtom 0.1, I will use <code><nowiki>My Name</nowiki></code> ; but it's not good
** [[Tantek]] You can actually simplify that (one fewer span) with: <code><nowiki>My Name</nowiki></code>

* require author as [[hCard]] (i.e. no change from 0.1)
** +2 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Entry source (atom:source) ====
* raised by [[User:Kevin Marks|Kevin Marks]]
** When defining hAtom 0.1, atom:source was omitted. We should consider adding this back in as a useful element for providing citations of composite feeds.
*** 2009-07-20 [[User:DavidJanes]] {{ToDo}} we need an example of how this would look in the real world

== Other Questions and Issues ==
General comments, modeling issues, algorithm issues, should have issues, etc. go here.

=== Entry Updated Required? -- Blogger Issue ===
moved to [[hatom-brainstorming]]

=== 'MAY have multiple Feed elements' -- details and viability of multiple feeds ===
moved to [[hatom-brainstorming]]

== pre 0.1 issues ==
'''This section is more or less closed, as hAtom 0.1 is out the door. If there are open issues that you are championing that didn't make it into hAtom 0.1, move them up above to the hAtom 0.2 section'''

See: [[hatom-issues-pre-0.1]]

== Template ==
{{issues-format}}

== See Also ==
* [[hatom|hAtom]] - the draft proposal
* [[hatom-faq]] - knowledge base
* [[hatom-issues-resolved]]
* [[blog-post-brainstorming]]
* [[blog-post-formats]]
* [[blog-post-examples]]
* [[blog-description-format]] - how to describe a blog (as opposed to the individual entries, which is what we're doing here)
* [[mfo-examples]]
* [[naming-principles]]

hatom-issues

2009-09-03T18:31:41Z

Chris Cressman: /* author optionality */ Supporting optionality of author.

<entry-title> hAtom issues </entry-title>
These are externally raised issues about [[hAtom]] with broadly varying degrees of merit. Thus some issues are REJECTED for a number of obvious reasons (but still documented here in case they are re-raised), and others contain longer discussions. Some issues may be ACCEPTED and perhaps cause changes or improved explanations in the spec.

'''IMPORTANT''': Please read the [[hatom-faq|hAtom FAQ]] and the [[hatom-issues-resolved|hAtom resolved issues]] ''before'' giving any feedback or raising any issues as your feedback/issues may already be resolved/answered.

Submitted issues may (and probably will) be edited and rewritten for better terseness, clarity, calmness, rationality, and as neutral a point of view as possible. Write your issues well. — [http://tantek.com/ Tantek]

== closed issues ==
See: [[hatom-issues-closed]]

== resolved issues ==
See: [[hatom-issues-resolved]]

== issues ==
Please add new issues to the '''bottom''' of the list by copy and pasting the [[#Template|Template]]. Please follow-up to resolved/rejected issues with new information rather than resubmitting such issues. Duplicate issue additions will be reverted.

===2009===
==== too many required hentry properties ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-05-26 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 requires numerous properties for an hentry (often based directly on required elements from the Atom standard). Given the broad variety of situations that hAtom is used in content, many (or even most) of these properties are not already specified in such content, and thus it is poor methodology to require them because there is a good chance (experience has shown) either (a) the content author will ignore the requirement, or (b) will make something up to satisfy the requirement. A few similar/overlapping/sub-issues are noted below (e.g. [[#Author|author is required]], and not always available).
*#* Proposed resolution. Make nearly all hentry properties "optional" in hAtom 0.2. Consider keeping at most only one required property, perhaps "updated" - that is, if there is no date of update/publication in the content you are trying to mark up, then perhaps it doesn't make sense to mark up that content with hAtom, since hAtom is for episodic, time-based/stamped content.
*#** consider pattern abstraction: all microformats should minimize "required" properties for the same reason, and perhaps ''only'' require at most a single property which is indicative of what that microformat is for, that is, if the author does not publish that one required property, then perhaps they should not be using the microformat that requires that one property.
*#* I have the same problem. I'm collecting various feeds to analyse them. The sources are often RSS 0.9, but I want to put the results into an Atom feed. --[[User:Simon Brodtmann|Simon Brodtmann]] 00:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
*#** entry:author should be optional and could be either a hCard or a string
*#** entry lacks a [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php#element.category category] and it shuld either use rel-tag or just be a string
* 2009-07-18 [[User:DavidJanes]] I would like to break this into a separate issue for each currently required element, as we're likely to have to define defaulting rules
* 2009-07-21 [[User:TobyInk|TobyInk]]: Why not have three levels of property: ''required'', ''recommended'' and ''optional''. There would be as few as possible ''required'' properties. Any properties which are needed to create a conformant application/atom+xml feed would be ''recommended''. Everything else would be ''optional''.'
** 2009-07-02 [[User:DavidJanes]] why not then use the RFC MUST, SHOULD and MAY terminology? I think this is a good idea though.
** 2009-09-03 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] +1 to the idea of property "levels" and reusing RFC terminology.

==== entry-title optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
*** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] but not recommended.
*** ... your vote here ...
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model value should be
*** the empty string
**** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** -1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]]
*** the value should not be blank.
**** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] see: [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/#requiredEntryElements Required Entry Elements] from Atom Enabled.
**** [[User:DavidJanes]] what should it be then, if physically representing it is optional? Since Atom makes this a SHOULD and not a MUST (I'm not shouting, just following RFC convention), and we're assuming there's a good reason for the entry-title not to be present in the first place, why not an empty string?
***** [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] entry:title is a required attribute of atom at both feed and entry level, in both instances it says "Contains a human readable title" (a requirement) an empty string is not anything human readable (personal oppinion), maybe hAtom 0.2 should only recommend that the value of entry-title "should" not be an empty string.
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]]

==== updated optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] ... the demand for optionality of the issue is high (cf the microsoft web clips) and if it remains required we're just going to reinvent hAtom without this element
*** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Agree there is demand for optionality. This requirement has previously deterred me from using hAtom.
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model should be
*** the page creation date
**** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== author optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] for the same reason 'updated' should be optional: we'll just reinvent hAtom slightly differently otherwise
*** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Same reason as 'updated' above.
*** ... your vote here ...
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model should be
*** "anonymous" (somewhat like [[hreview]]), except not explicit
**** +0.5 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** 0 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Using a blog post as an example, I can determine the author from surrounding context. 'Anonymous' doesn't seem like an acceptable solution. However, I don't have the technical expertise to create a better solution and would be willing to accept 'anonymous'.
*** make this implementation defined
*** something constructed from the page's URL & other information
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]

=== 2008 ===
==== add url property to hentry ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2008-09-10 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 uses [[rel-bookmark]] for permalinks. Permalinks may not always be hyperlinks or hyperlinkable. Thus I propose we re-use the <code>url</code> property (from [[hCard]], [[hCalendar]], [[hReview]], etc.) as a sub-property of the <code>hentry</code> property/container/root.
*#* Proposed resolution. Add "url" sub-property to "hentry" in hAtom 0.2.
*# {{ToDo}} can anyone provide examples where this would be used? [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== misuse of address element ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2008-06-07 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 says "an Entry Author element SHOULD be encoded in an <code><address></code> element" and "find the Nearest In Parent <code><address></code> element(s) with class name author and that is/are a valid hCard" - this is a misuse of the address element. The address element means the ''contact'' for the page or major portion thereof (see [[hcard-faq#Should_I_use_ADDRESS_for_hCards|hCard FAQ: Should I use ADDRESS for hCards]]), which ''may'' also be the ''author'' but is not necessarily. See [[hcards-and-pages]] for more details on this semantic distinction.
*#* Proposed resolution: Eliminate all requirements and recommended use of the <code><address></code> element from hAtom.
*#** +1 --[[User:Csarven|Sarven Capadisli]] 11:57, 11 Nov 2008 (PST)
*#** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

=== 2007 ===
==== marking up comments ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2007-11-25 raised by [http://www.wirewd.com/ Ken Wronkiewicz].
*# There's no currently defined way to exactly handle threaded discussions. I think this is quite useful to have.
*#* The prior art is RFC [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4685 4864]. The microformat solution should map fairly cleanly to this.
* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] I think hAtom Comments should be a separate spec
*** +1 to David's -1. [[User:TobyInk|TobyInk]] They're in a separate RFC, so should be separate to hAtom too. That said, it would be nice if hAtom had a clear, documented mechanism for creating extensions.
** +1 [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]] Comments are the important "next step" for hAtom. The proposal I've seen that I most liked was embedding an hfeed in an hentry.
*** [[User:DavidJanes]] would you look to explicitly write out that proposal here (or in a new section); this is my preferred solution too, but there's another proposal on the table for doing this too

==== atom:category scheme ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2007-06-01 raised by [http://theryanking.com/ Ryan King].
*# ''[[rel-tag#Tag_Spaces|rel-tag tagspaces]] should map to atom:category schemes''
*#* hAtom already defines how to map term and label. It seems that the tagspace can easily map to scheme
*# {{ToDo}} can we get a real-world example mapping of this? [[User:DavidJanes]]

=== 2006 ===
====Geo====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-02-03 raised by [[BrianSuda]]
** We can use the [[geo]] microformat in [[hatom]] to represent GeoRSS element
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] - this is just making explicit a particular composition. is it not? Also: if there's a geo in a hfeed (outside of hentry), should it be considered to apply to all entries?
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Relationship of rel-bookmark to url+uid ====
The concept of permalink is available in hCard and hCalendar as the classes url and uid. This combination matches the permalink semantics by indicating that the url should be derefenced to find a more dynamic or up-to-date version of the content, and that that url is a stable unique id that can be used to identify the content.

hAtom 0.1 uses rel-bookmark for the permalink concept. The current state of [[uid-brainstorming]] indicates that the [[hCard]] and [[hCalendar]] permalink concept is likely to be used in subsequent microformats. It may be important to reconcile hAtom with that trajectory. Possible reconcilliations include:

1) To leave things as they are. The two permalink concepts are to be kept separate.

2) Treat the two concepts as equivalent. Allow both in hAtom, and consider allowing both in other formats. eg <a rel="bookmark" href="http://example.com/"> would fill out uid and url values if they are not supplied explicitly.

3) Choose one over the other for hAtom and perhaps for future microformats also. "url uid" allows for some greater freedom (uid can be pointed at a non-url uid), but it is unclear at this stage whether that freedom is warranted or advisable to permit.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] (let's wait for resolution elsewhere, also would need real world examples)
** -1 [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]]

==== Datetime format (atom:updated and atom:published) ====
* 2006-05-23 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** Atom requires the use RFC3339 datetimes, while hAtom 0.1 does not specify which datetime formats may be used.
*** ACCEPTED FAQ - hAtom references datetime-design-pattern, which discusses which date format to use
** 2009-07-20 [[User:DavidJanes]] {{ToDo}} is this moot? can we move this to resolved?

==== Feed id (atom:id) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
*# atom:id is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to.

It is suggested the Feed permalink should be used as the feed ID, however a piece by Mark Pilgrim (http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/28/howto-atom-id) makes arguments against using permalinks and in favour of Tag URIs.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] not enough development of these ideas yes

==== Feed permalink (atom:permalink) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** I'm proposing the following rules:
**# a Feed Permalink element is identified by [[rel-bookmark]] at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# a Feed <del>SHOULD</del><ins>MAY</ins> have a Feed Permalink
**# a Feed Permalink element represents the concept of an Atom link in a feed.
**# if the Feed Permalink is missing, use the URI of the page; if the Feed has an "id" attribute, add that as a fragment to the page URI
** 2006-04-03 [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] - I'm not sure that having a rel-boomkark-able link element at the feed level / to designate a feed in an html page separate for the other content is anything close to normal usage on the web, so I'd be very hesitant on suggesting this element "SHOULD" exist. I'm also curious when this element would link to anything but the current page (or some element on the current page) for this to be useful in the context of the HTML doc. I think taking the "id" on the feed is a more workable solution in most cases.
** 2006-04-03 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: I've replaced "SHOULD" with "MAY".
** 2006-04-24 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Maybe we could simplify my proposal to:
*** "''Use the URI of the page; if the Feed has an "id" attribute, add that as a fragment to the page URI''"
*** IMO this would be good enough for at least 80% of the cases.
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]]: {{ToDo}} can we find an example of this in the wild and if so we should add it to the -examples page.
** [[User:Singpolyma|singpolyma]] 00:05, 13 Apr 2006 (PDT) : since the link is going to be pointing to the home page for the item wouldn't [[rel-home]] make more sense? That's what I'm using in the XOXO Blog Format and my reasoning was that if hAtom ever defined this rel=home made the most sense for what you would add, because the feed's link is not to a part of the site by to the home of the site.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] not enough development of these ideas yes

==== Feed updated (atom:updated) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:updated is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. I'm proposing the following rules:
**# The Feed Updated element is identified by the class name <code>updated</code> at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# If no element with the class name <code>updated</code> is present, use the youngest <code>updated</code> from the feed's entries.
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]] I like this. And the definition of "feed level"
** 2007-06-20 [[User:MikeKaply]] The "youngest" thing is a really bad idea. If a page has 100 hAtom entries, a parser would have to go through all 100 looking for a low date. That's crazy.
*** 2008-03-20 [[User:TobyInk]] Not crazy at all. I've just implemented an hAtom to Atom converter and I do precisely this. Most (useful) hAtom parsers will "go through all 100 entries" anyway, won't they? So why not look for the youngest updated date as part of that loop. The only slight annoyance is that in RFC 4287, the <atom:updated> element must occur before the first <atom:entry> element -- this is easily solved by inserting a placeholder <atom:updated> element, looping through the entries and then going back and filling in the date. This is really, really, '''not''' a difficult thing to implement.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** +0.5 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Feed title (atom:title) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:title is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. I'm proposing the following rules:
**# a Feed Title element is identified by the class name <code><del>entry</del><ins>feed</ins>-title</code>
**# a Feed SHOULD have an Feed Title
**# a Feed Title element represents the concept of an Atom feed title
**# if the Feed Title is missing, use
**#* <del>the first <code><h#></code> element in the Feed, or</del>
**#* the <code><title></code> of the page, or
**#* assume it is the empty string
** 2006-04-01 [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] - I think that the fall back to using the first h# on the page is dangerous.. depending on the pge it may be something that changes often (first h# is a post title) or is otherwise ambiguous. I would think using <code><title></code> before h# would be prefered if not the most common desire of the page author.
** 2006-04-05 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Okay. Deleted "the first <code><h#></code> element in the Feed, or"
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]] Note also in support of this decision that many blogs use <code><h#></code> to encode the date for a group of postings
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]]: why <code>entry-title</code> for the feed title. Why not <code>fn</code> or <code>feed-title</code>?
** 2006-04-12 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Sorry, this was a "copy & paste" mistake. Fixed now.
** 2007-02-26 [[User:MikeKaply|Mike Kaply]]: I think a feed title should be mandatory if an hfeed is present. If you have multiple feeds on a page, there is no way in a user interface to distinguish between different feeds.

==== Feed author and Entry author (atom:author) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** I'm proposing the following rules for Feed author:
**# a Feed Author element is represented by class name <code>author</code> at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# a Feed Author element represents the concept of a Atom author
**# a Feed Author element MUST be encoded in a [[hcard|hCard]]
**# a Feed Author element SHOULD be encoded in a <code><address></code> element
**# a Feed MAY have more than one Feed Author elements
**# if the Feed Author is missing
**#* find the [[algorithm-nearest-in-parent|Nearest In Parent]] <code><address></code> element(s) with class name <code>author</code> and that is/are a valid [[hcard|hCard]]
**#* otherwise <del>the Feed is invalid hAtom</del> <ins>there is no Feed Author</ins>
** I'm proposing the following rules for entry author:
**# an Entry Author element is represented by class name <code>author</code>
**# an Entry Author element represents the concept of an Atom author
**# an Entry Author element MUST be encoded in an [[hcard|hCard]]
**# an Entry Author element SHOULD be encoded in an <code><address></code> element
**#<del> If a Feed has no Feed author each Entry MUST have at least one Entry Author element</del>
**# <ins>If an Entry is enclosed by a Feed and this Feed has no Feed author, each Entry MUST have at least one Entry Author element. If an Entry is not enclosed by a Feed and has no Entry Author:
**#* find the [[algorithm-nearest-in-parent|Nearest In Parent]] <code><address></code> element(s) with class name <code>author</code> and that is/are a valid [[hcard|hCard]]
**#* otherwise the Entry is invalid hAtom</ins>
**# an Entry MAY have more than one Entry Author elements
** [[User:Singpolyma|singpolyma]] 00:11, 13 Apr 2006 (PDT) : feed should not be invalid hAtom if feed-level has no author -- it should be invalid if feed-level has no author AND one or more entries have no author. Also, one or more entries may be missing an author IF feed-level has an author.
** 2006-04-17 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: I replaced "the Feed is invalid hAtom" with "there is no Feed Author"

==== Entry id (atom:id) ====
* {{OpenIssue}}2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:id is required for atom:entry. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. The Entry permalink should be used as the entry id.
** --[[User:Federico|Federico]] 19:52, 25 Apr 2006 (PDT): I would add "Only if the id attribute is not defined for the element that contains the entry". The id attribute can be a tag uri. If you use always use the Entry permalink as the entry id and the Atom feed uses tag uris, you would end with two different ids for the same entry.
** 2006-12-31 response by [[User:ComputerKid|Emanla Eraton]] No, it shouldn't be a permalink. It should be a "tag:" id for entries.
** 2007-06-06 [[RyanKing]] - the syntax of tag URIs and html id attributes are incompatible. HTML disallows forward-slash (/) in ids [http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-name], while tag URIs require them [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc4151.html].

==== Author ====
===== author as an hcard is too much to require =====
The following 3 items were extracted from the conversation starting on irc with [http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-03-24#T152248 logs available starting around here]

* [[User:Fil|Fil]] If, for example, you are programming an "aggregator" of news syndicated from many sources like in [http://sedna.spip.org/sedna/ Sedna], chances are that you don't control what "authors" look like; they can be nicely microformated (if coming from an mf-enabled system), but most probably they will be internally represented by a string that contains, in some random order, a name, and/or an email, and so on. If you want to pass on this information in an hAtom feed, you can't possibly reformat it to an hCard. But you still want to pass it on in a <div class="author"> element.
** [[Tantek]] I don't believe the "can't possibly" statement. Please provide a URL to a concrete example that you think you can't possibly reformat into an hCard so we can all take a look.
** [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] details of Fil's extraction [http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-03-24#T153453 in irc logs] including sting data passed to his app in the form of "Béatrice XXXXXXX beatrice.xxxxxx@@zzzzzzzzz.com"
** [[User:Fil|Fil]] the example url was given up there (Sedna); note that the author information comes from syndication links; nobody is going to edit them to outline what is the name, what is the email and so on, as everything is flowing through automatically... so here the "author" data is dirty, and will not be cleaned into an hCard. We can force it to be in an hCard but it will be meaningless if the source (original data) wasn't built on an mf-enabled software.

* [[pnhChris]] i don't disagree.. the field often comes from places too dumb to follow these rules well; even cases like wordpress that allow users to present their name 1 of 6 or 8 difference ways (from username to LF, FN) .. its not just writing a template to output as hatom at that point... you have to go further upstream where the string to be displayed is chosen .. I also think its pointless to have 10 vcards on the same page whose only data is a generic name like "Chris"
** [[Tantek]] 10 vcards that are the same is pointless yes, but identifying who the author of 10 posts are is not pointless - that's the difference.
** [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] Agreed, but I still have concerns that "author" in hAtom does not always make for good hCards, though the situations where it does is optimal. My comments in the conversation were old comments I've made before over concerns and hardships or the lack of desire to make crappy data more portable, in neither of these cases do I think my two comments alone provide reasons to make change from the hAtom 0.1 spec
***[[User:Phae|Frances]] - Just thought I'd mention a scenario I have where the author of an entry does make a pretty useless vCard - the author in each case is an entire team ("creative team", "technical department") etc., rather than a specific, identifiable, person. Some use may be regained when URL to specific team/information is included, in this circumstance.
****[[User:TobyInk]] - A vCard (thus an hCard) does not have to represent a person -- it could represent an organisation, or a department or team.
* [[User:Fil|Fil]] for the moment, to comply losely with hAtom 0.1, I will use <code><nowiki>My Name</nowiki></code> ; but it's not good
** [[Tantek]] You can actually simplify that (one fewer span) with: <code><nowiki>My Name</nowiki></code>

* require author as [[hCard]] (i.e. no change from 0.1)
** +2 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Entry source (atom:source) ====
* raised by [[User:Kevin Marks|Kevin Marks]]
** When defining hAtom 0.1, atom:source was omitted. We should consider adding this back in as a useful element for providing citations of composite feeds.
*** 2009-07-20 [[User:DavidJanes]] {{ToDo}} we need an example of how this would look in the real world

== Other Questions and Issues ==
General comments, modeling issues, algorithm issues, should have issues, etc. go here.

=== Entry Updated Required? -- Blogger Issue ===
moved to [[hatom-brainstorming]]

=== 'MAY have multiple Feed elements' -- details and viability of multiple feeds ===
moved to [[hatom-brainstorming]]

== pre 0.1 issues ==
'''This section is more or less closed, as hAtom 0.1 is out the door. If there are open issues that you are championing that didn't make it into hAtom 0.1, move them up above to the hAtom 0.2 section'''

See: [[hatom-issues-pre-0.1]]

== Template ==
{{issues-format}}

== See Also ==
* [[hatom|hAtom]] - the draft proposal
* [[hatom-faq]] - knowledge base
* [[hatom-issues-resolved]]
* [[blog-post-brainstorming]]
* [[blog-post-formats]]
* [[blog-post-examples]]
* [[blog-description-format]] - how to describe a blog (as opposed to the individual entries, which is what we're doing here)
* [[mfo-examples]]
* [[naming-principles]]

hatom-issues

2009-09-03T18:23:27Z

Chris Cressman: Supporting the optionality of the "updated" property.

<entry-title> hAtom issues </entry-title>
These are externally raised issues about [[hAtom]] with broadly varying degrees of merit. Thus some issues are REJECTED for a number of obvious reasons (but still documented here in case they are re-raised), and others contain longer discussions. Some issues may be ACCEPTED and perhaps cause changes or improved explanations in the spec.

'''IMPORTANT''': Please read the [[hatom-faq|hAtom FAQ]] and the [[hatom-issues-resolved|hAtom resolved issues]] ''before'' giving any feedback or raising any issues as your feedback/issues may already be resolved/answered.

Submitted issues may (and probably will) be edited and rewritten for better terseness, clarity, calmness, rationality, and as neutral a point of view as possible. Write your issues well. — [http://tantek.com/ Tantek]

== closed issues ==
See: [[hatom-issues-closed]]

== resolved issues ==
See: [[hatom-issues-resolved]]

== issues ==
Please add new issues to the '''bottom''' of the list by copy and pasting the [[#Template|Template]]. Please follow-up to resolved/rejected issues with new information rather than resubmitting such issues. Duplicate issue additions will be reverted.

===2009===
==== too many required hentry properties ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-05-26 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 requires numerous properties for an hentry (often based directly on required elements from the Atom standard). Given the broad variety of situations that hAtom is used in content, many (or even most) of these properties are not already specified in such content, and thus it is poor methodology to require them because there is a good chance (experience has shown) either (a) the content author will ignore the requirement, or (b) will make something up to satisfy the requirement. A few similar/overlapping/sub-issues are noted below (e.g. [[#Author|author is required]], and not always available).
*#* Proposed resolution. Make nearly all hentry properties "optional" in hAtom 0.2. Consider keeping at most only one required property, perhaps "updated" - that is, if there is no date of update/publication in the content you are trying to mark up, then perhaps it doesn't make sense to mark up that content with hAtom, since hAtom is for episodic, time-based/stamped content.
*#** consider pattern abstraction: all microformats should minimize "required" properties for the same reason, and perhaps ''only'' require at most a single property which is indicative of what that microformat is for, that is, if the author does not publish that one required property, then perhaps they should not be using the microformat that requires that one property.
*#* I have the same problem. I'm collecting various feeds to analyse them. The sources are often RSS 0.9, but I want to put the results into an Atom feed. --[[User:Simon Brodtmann|Simon Brodtmann]] 00:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
*#** entry:author should be optional and could be either a hCard or a string
*#** entry lacks a [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php#element.category category] and it shuld either use rel-tag or just be a string
* 2009-07-18 [[User:DavidJanes]] I would like to break this into a separate issue for each currently required element, as we're likely to have to define defaulting rules
* 2009-07-21 [[User:TobyInk|TobyInk]]: Why not have three levels of property: ''required'', ''recommended'' and ''optional''. There would be as few as possible ''required'' properties. Any properties which are needed to create a conformant application/atom+xml feed would be ''recommended''. Everything else would be ''optional''.'
** 2009-07-02 [[User:DavidJanes]] why not then use the RFC MUST, SHOULD and MAY terminology? I think this is a good idea though.
** 2009-09-03 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] +1 to the idea of property "levels" and reusing RFC terminology.

==== entry-title optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
*** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] but not recommended.
*** ... your vote here ...
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model value should be
*** the empty string
**** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** -1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]]
*** the value should not be blank.
**** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] see: [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/#requiredEntryElements Required Entry Elements] from Atom Enabled.
**** [[User:DavidJanes]] what should it be then, if physically representing it is optional? Since Atom makes this a SHOULD and not a MUST (I'm not shouting, just following RFC convention), and we're assuming there's a good reason for the entry-title not to be present in the first place, why not an empty string?
***** [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] entry:title is a required attribute of atom at both feed and entry level, in both instances it says "Contains a human readable title" (a requirement) an empty string is not anything human readable (personal oppinion), maybe hAtom 0.2 should only recommend that the value of entry-title "should" not be an empty string.
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]]

==== updated optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] ... the demand for optionality of the issue is high (cf the microsoft web clips) and if it remains required we're just going to reinvent hAtom without this element
*** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] Agree there is demand for optionality. This requirement has previously deterred me from using hAtom.
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model should be
*** the page creation date
**** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** +1 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== author optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] for the same reason 'updated' should be optional: we'll just reinvent hAtom slightly differently otherwise
*** ... your vote here ...
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model should be
*** "anonymous" (somewhat like [[hreview]]), except not explicit
**** +0.5 [[User:DavidJanes]]
*** make this implementation defined
*** something constructed from the page's URL & other information
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

=== 2008 ===
==== add url property to hentry ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2008-09-10 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 uses [[rel-bookmark]] for permalinks. Permalinks may not always be hyperlinks or hyperlinkable. Thus I propose we re-use the <code>url</code> property (from [[hCard]], [[hCalendar]], [[hReview]], etc.) as a sub-property of the <code>hentry</code> property/container/root.
*#* Proposed resolution. Add "url" sub-property to "hentry" in hAtom 0.2.
*# {{ToDo}} can anyone provide examples where this would be used? [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== misuse of address element ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2008-06-07 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 says "an Entry Author element SHOULD be encoded in an <code><address></code> element" and "find the Nearest In Parent <code><address></code> element(s) with class name author and that is/are a valid hCard" - this is a misuse of the address element. The address element means the ''contact'' for the page or major portion thereof (see [[hcard-faq#Should_I_use_ADDRESS_for_hCards|hCard FAQ: Should I use ADDRESS for hCards]]), which ''may'' also be the ''author'' but is not necessarily. See [[hcards-and-pages]] for more details on this semantic distinction.
*#* Proposed resolution: Eliminate all requirements and recommended use of the <code><address></code> element from hAtom.
*#** +1 --[[User:Csarven|Sarven Capadisli]] 11:57, 11 Nov 2008 (PST)
*#** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

=== 2007 ===
==== marking up comments ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2007-11-25 raised by [http://www.wirewd.com/ Ken Wronkiewicz].
*# There's no currently defined way to exactly handle threaded discussions. I think this is quite useful to have.
*#* The prior art is RFC [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4685 4864]. The microformat solution should map fairly cleanly to this.
* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] I think hAtom Comments should be a separate spec
*** +1 to David's -1. [[User:TobyInk|TobyInk]] They're in a separate RFC, so should be separate to hAtom too. That said, it would be nice if hAtom had a clear, documented mechanism for creating extensions.
** +1 [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]] Comments are the important "next step" for hAtom. The proposal I've seen that I most liked was embedding an hfeed in an hentry.
*** [[User:DavidJanes]] would you look to explicitly write out that proposal here (or in a new section); this is my preferred solution too, but there's another proposal on the table for doing this too

==== atom:category scheme ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2007-06-01 raised by [http://theryanking.com/ Ryan King].
*# ''[[rel-tag#Tag_Spaces|rel-tag tagspaces]] should map to atom:category schemes''
*#* hAtom already defines how to map term and label. It seems that the tagspace can easily map to scheme
*# {{ToDo}} can we get a real-world example mapping of this? [[User:DavidJanes]]

=== 2006 ===
====Geo====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-02-03 raised by [[BrianSuda]]
** We can use the [[geo]] microformat in [[hatom]] to represent GeoRSS element
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] - this is just making explicit a particular composition. is it not? Also: if there's a geo in a hfeed (outside of hentry), should it be considered to apply to all entries?
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Relationship of rel-bookmark to url+uid ====
The concept of permalink is available in hCard and hCalendar as the classes url and uid. This combination matches the permalink semantics by indicating that the url should be derefenced to find a more dynamic or up-to-date version of the content, and that that url is a stable unique id that can be used to identify the content.

hAtom 0.1 uses rel-bookmark for the permalink concept. The current state of [[uid-brainstorming]] indicates that the [[hCard]] and [[hCalendar]] permalink concept is likely to be used in subsequent microformats. It may be important to reconcile hAtom with that trajectory. Possible reconcilliations include:

1) To leave things as they are. The two permalink concepts are to be kept separate.

2) Treat the two concepts as equivalent. Allow both in hAtom, and consider allowing both in other formats. eg <a rel="bookmark" href="http://example.com/"> would fill out uid and url values if they are not supplied explicitly.

3) Choose one over the other for hAtom and perhaps for future microformats also. "url uid" allows for some greater freedom (uid can be pointed at a non-url uid), but it is unclear at this stage whether that freedom is warranted or advisable to permit.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] (let's wait for resolution elsewhere, also would need real world examples)
** -1 [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]]

==== Datetime format (atom:updated and atom:published) ====
* 2006-05-23 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** Atom requires the use RFC3339 datetimes, while hAtom 0.1 does not specify which datetime formats may be used.
*** ACCEPTED FAQ - hAtom references datetime-design-pattern, which discusses which date format to use
** 2009-07-20 [[User:DavidJanes]] {{ToDo}} is this moot? can we move this to resolved?

==== Feed id (atom:id) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
*# atom:id is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to.

It is suggested the Feed permalink should be used as the feed ID, however a piece by Mark Pilgrim (http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/28/howto-atom-id) makes arguments against using permalinks and in favour of Tag URIs.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] not enough development of these ideas yes

==== Feed permalink (atom:permalink) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** I'm proposing the following rules:
**# a Feed Permalink element is identified by [[rel-bookmark]] at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# a Feed <del>SHOULD</del><ins>MAY</ins> have a Feed Permalink
**# a Feed Permalink element represents the concept of an Atom link in a feed.
**# if the Feed Permalink is missing, use the URI of the page; if the Feed has an "id" attribute, add that as a fragment to the page URI
** 2006-04-03 [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] - I'm not sure that having a rel-boomkark-able link element at the feed level / to designate a feed in an html page separate for the other content is anything close to normal usage on the web, so I'd be very hesitant on suggesting this element "SHOULD" exist. I'm also curious when this element would link to anything but the current page (or some element on the current page) for this to be useful in the context of the HTML doc. I think taking the "id" on the feed is a more workable solution in most cases.
** 2006-04-03 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: I've replaced "SHOULD" with "MAY".
** 2006-04-24 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Maybe we could simplify my proposal to:
*** "''Use the URI of the page; if the Feed has an "id" attribute, add that as a fragment to the page URI''"
*** IMO this would be good enough for at least 80% of the cases.
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]]: {{ToDo}} can we find an example of this in the wild and if so we should add it to the -examples page.
** [[User:Singpolyma|singpolyma]] 00:05, 13 Apr 2006 (PDT) : since the link is going to be pointing to the home page for the item wouldn't [[rel-home]] make more sense? That's what I'm using in the XOXO Blog Format and my reasoning was that if hAtom ever defined this rel=home made the most sense for what you would add, because the feed's link is not to a part of the site by to the home of the site.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] not enough development of these ideas yes

==== Feed updated (atom:updated) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:updated is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. I'm proposing the following rules:
**# The Feed Updated element is identified by the class name <code>updated</code> at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# If no element with the class name <code>updated</code> is present, use the youngest <code>updated</code> from the feed's entries.
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]] I like this. And the definition of "feed level"
** 2007-06-20 [[User:MikeKaply]] The "youngest" thing is a really bad idea. If a page has 100 hAtom entries, a parser would have to go through all 100 looking for a low date. That's crazy.
*** 2008-03-20 [[User:TobyInk]] Not crazy at all. I've just implemented an hAtom to Atom converter and I do precisely this. Most (useful) hAtom parsers will "go through all 100 entries" anyway, won't they? So why not look for the youngest updated date as part of that loop. The only slight annoyance is that in RFC 4287, the <atom:updated> element must occur before the first <atom:entry> element -- this is easily solved by inserting a placeholder <atom:updated> element, looping through the entries and then going back and filling in the date. This is really, really, '''not''' a difficult thing to implement.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** +0.5 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Feed title (atom:title) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:title is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. I'm proposing the following rules:
**# a Feed Title element is identified by the class name <code><del>entry</del><ins>feed</ins>-title</code>
**# a Feed SHOULD have an Feed Title
**# a Feed Title element represents the concept of an Atom feed title
**# if the Feed Title is missing, use
**#* <del>the first <code><h#></code> element in the Feed, or</del>
**#* the <code><title></code> of the page, or
**#* assume it is the empty string
** 2006-04-01 [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] - I think that the fall back to using the first h# on the page is dangerous.. depending on the pge it may be something that changes often (first h# is a post title) or is otherwise ambiguous. I would think using <code><title></code> before h# would be prefered if not the most common desire of the page author.
** 2006-04-05 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Okay. Deleted "the first <code><h#></code> element in the Feed, or"
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]] Note also in support of this decision that many blogs use <code><h#></code> to encode the date for a group of postings
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]]: why <code>entry-title</code> for the feed title. Why not <code>fn</code> or <code>feed-title</code>?
** 2006-04-12 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Sorry, this was a "copy & paste" mistake. Fixed now.
** 2007-02-26 [[User:MikeKaply|Mike Kaply]]: I think a feed title should be mandatory if an hfeed is present. If you have multiple feeds on a page, there is no way in a user interface to distinguish between different feeds.

==== Feed author and Entry author (atom:author) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** I'm proposing the following rules for Feed author:
**# a Feed Author element is represented by class name <code>author</code> at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# a Feed Author element represents the concept of a Atom author
**# a Feed Author element MUST be encoded in a [[hcard|hCard]]
**# a Feed Author element SHOULD be encoded in a <code><address></code> element
**# a Feed MAY have more than one Feed Author elements
**# if the Feed Author is missing
**#* find the [[algorithm-nearest-in-parent|Nearest In Parent]] <code><address></code> element(s) with class name <code>author</code> and that is/are a valid [[hcard|hCard]]
**#* otherwise <del>the Feed is invalid hAtom</del> <ins>there is no Feed Author</ins>
** I'm proposing the following rules for entry author:
**# an Entry Author element is represented by class name <code>author</code>
**# an Entry Author element represents the concept of an Atom author
**# an Entry Author element MUST be encoded in an [[hcard|hCard]]
**# an Entry Author element SHOULD be encoded in an <code><address></code> element
**#<del> If a Feed has no Feed author each Entry MUST have at least one Entry Author element</del>
**# <ins>If an Entry is enclosed by a Feed and this Feed has no Feed author, each Entry MUST have at least one Entry Author element. If an Entry is not enclosed by a Feed and has no Entry Author:
**#* find the [[algorithm-nearest-in-parent|Nearest In Parent]] <code><address></code> element(s) with class name <code>author</code> and that is/are a valid [[hcard|hCard]]
**#* otherwise the Entry is invalid hAtom</ins>
**# an Entry MAY have more than one Entry Author elements
** [[User:Singpolyma|singpolyma]] 00:11, 13 Apr 2006 (PDT) : feed should not be invalid hAtom if feed-level has no author -- it should be invalid if feed-level has no author AND one or more entries have no author. Also, one or more entries may be missing an author IF feed-level has an author.
** 2006-04-17 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: I replaced "the Feed is invalid hAtom" with "there is no Feed Author"

==== Entry id (atom:id) ====
* {{OpenIssue}}2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:id is required for atom:entry. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. The Entry permalink should be used as the entry id.
** --[[User:Federico|Federico]] 19:52, 25 Apr 2006 (PDT): I would add "Only if the id attribute is not defined for the element that contains the entry". The id attribute can be a tag uri. If you use always use the Entry permalink as the entry id and the Atom feed uses tag uris, you would end with two different ids for the same entry.
** 2006-12-31 response by [[User:ComputerKid|Emanla Eraton]] No, it shouldn't be a permalink. It should be a "tag:" id for entries.
** 2007-06-06 [[RyanKing]] - the syntax of tag URIs and html id attributes are incompatible. HTML disallows forward-slash (/) in ids [http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-name], while tag URIs require them [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc4151.html].

==== Author ====
===== author as an hcard is too much to require =====
The following 3 items were extracted from the conversation starting on irc with [http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-03-24#T152248 logs available starting around here]

* [[User:Fil|Fil]] If, for example, you are programming an "aggregator" of news syndicated from many sources like in [http://sedna.spip.org/sedna/ Sedna], chances are that you don't control what "authors" look like; they can be nicely microformated (if coming from an mf-enabled system), but most probably they will be internally represented by a string that contains, in some random order, a name, and/or an email, and so on. If you want to pass on this information in an hAtom feed, you can't possibly reformat it to an hCard. But you still want to pass it on in a <div class="author"> element.
** [[Tantek]] I don't believe the "can't possibly" statement. Please provide a URL to a concrete example that you think you can't possibly reformat into an hCard so we can all take a look.
** [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] details of Fil's extraction [http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-03-24#T153453 in irc logs] including sting data passed to his app in the form of "Béatrice XXXXXXX beatrice.xxxxxx@@zzzzzzzzz.com"
** [[User:Fil|Fil]] the example url was given up there (Sedna); note that the author information comes from syndication links; nobody is going to edit them to outline what is the name, what is the email and so on, as everything is flowing through automatically... so here the "author" data is dirty, and will not be cleaned into an hCard. We can force it to be in an hCard but it will be meaningless if the source (original data) wasn't built on an mf-enabled software.

* [[pnhChris]] i don't disagree.. the field often comes from places too dumb to follow these rules well; even cases like wordpress that allow users to present their name 1 of 6 or 8 difference ways (from username to LF, FN) .. its not just writing a template to output as hatom at that point... you have to go further upstream where the string to be displayed is chosen .. I also think its pointless to have 10 vcards on the same page whose only data is a generic name like "Chris"
** [[Tantek]] 10 vcards that are the same is pointless yes, but identifying who the author of 10 posts are is not pointless - that's the difference.
** [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] Agreed, but I still have concerns that "author" in hAtom does not always make for good hCards, though the situations where it does is optimal. My comments in the conversation were old comments I've made before over concerns and hardships or the lack of desire to make crappy data more portable, in neither of these cases do I think my two comments alone provide reasons to make change from the hAtom 0.1 spec
***[[User:Phae|Frances]] - Just thought I'd mention a scenario I have where the author of an entry does make a pretty useless vCard - the author in each case is an entire team ("creative team", "technical department") etc., rather than a specific, identifiable, person. Some use may be regained when URL to specific team/information is included, in this circumstance.
****[[User:TobyInk]] - A vCard (thus an hCard) does not have to represent a person -- it could represent an organisation, or a department or team.
* [[User:Fil|Fil]] for the moment, to comply losely with hAtom 0.1, I will use <code><nowiki>My Name</nowiki></code> ; but it's not good
** [[Tantek]] You can actually simplify that (one fewer span) with: <code><nowiki>My Name</nowiki></code>

* require author as [[hCard]] (i.e. no change from 0.1)
** +2 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Entry source (atom:source) ====
* raised by [[User:Kevin Marks|Kevin Marks]]
** When defining hAtom 0.1, atom:source was omitted. We should consider adding this back in as a useful element for providing citations of composite feeds.
*** 2009-07-20 [[User:DavidJanes]] {{ToDo}} we need an example of how this would look in the real world

== Other Questions and Issues ==
General comments, modeling issues, algorithm issues, should have issues, etc. go here.

=== Entry Updated Required? -- Blogger Issue ===
moved to [[hatom-brainstorming]]

=== 'MAY have multiple Feed elements' -- details and viability of multiple feeds ===
moved to [[hatom-brainstorming]]

== pre 0.1 issues ==
'''This section is more or less closed, as hAtom 0.1 is out the door. If there are open issues that you are championing that didn't make it into hAtom 0.1, move them up above to the hAtom 0.2 section'''

See: [[hatom-issues-pre-0.1]]

== Template ==
{{issues-format}}

== See Also ==
* [[hatom|hAtom]] - the draft proposal
* [[hatom-faq]] - knowledge base
* [[hatom-issues-resolved]]
* [[blog-post-brainstorming]]
* [[blog-post-formats]]
* [[blog-post-examples]]
* [[blog-description-format]] - how to describe a blog (as opposed to the individual entries, which is what we're doing here)
* [[mfo-examples]]
* [[naming-principles]]

hatom-issues

2009-09-03T18:15:58Z

Chris Cressman: Supporting the idea to use RFC terminology to describe the "level" of hAtom properties.

<entry-title> hAtom issues </entry-title>
These are externally raised issues about [[hAtom]] with broadly varying degrees of merit. Thus some issues are REJECTED for a number of obvious reasons (but still documented here in case they are re-raised), and others contain longer discussions. Some issues may be ACCEPTED and perhaps cause changes or improved explanations in the spec.

'''IMPORTANT''': Please read the [[hatom-faq|hAtom FAQ]] and the [[hatom-issues-resolved|hAtom resolved issues]] ''before'' giving any feedback or raising any issues as your feedback/issues may already be resolved/answered.

Submitted issues may (and probably will) be edited and rewritten for better terseness, clarity, calmness, rationality, and as neutral a point of view as possible. Write your issues well. — [http://tantek.com/ Tantek]

== closed issues ==
See: [[hatom-issues-closed]]

== resolved issues ==
See: [[hatom-issues-resolved]]

== issues ==
Please add new issues to the '''bottom''' of the list by copy and pasting the [[#Template|Template]]. Please follow-up to resolved/rejected issues with new information rather than resubmitting such issues. Duplicate issue additions will be reverted.

===2009===
==== too many required hentry properties ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-05-26 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 requires numerous properties for an hentry (often based directly on required elements from the Atom standard). Given the broad variety of situations that hAtom is used in content, many (or even most) of these properties are not already specified in such content, and thus it is poor methodology to require them because there is a good chance (experience has shown) either (a) the content author will ignore the requirement, or (b) will make something up to satisfy the requirement. A few similar/overlapping/sub-issues are noted below (e.g. [[#Author|author is required]], and not always available).
*#* Proposed resolution. Make nearly all hentry properties "optional" in hAtom 0.2. Consider keeping at most only one required property, perhaps "updated" - that is, if there is no date of update/publication in the content you are trying to mark up, then perhaps it doesn't make sense to mark up that content with hAtom, since hAtom is for episodic, time-based/stamped content.
*#** consider pattern abstraction: all microformats should minimize "required" properties for the same reason, and perhaps ''only'' require at most a single property which is indicative of what that microformat is for, that is, if the author does not publish that one required property, then perhaps they should not be using the microformat that requires that one property.
*#* I have the same problem. I'm collecting various feeds to analyse them. The sources are often RSS 0.9, but I want to put the results into an Atom feed. --[[User:Simon Brodtmann|Simon Brodtmann]] 00:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
*#** entry:author should be optional and could be either a hCard or a string
*#** entry lacks a [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php#element.category category] and it shuld either use rel-tag or just be a string
* 2009-07-18 [[User:DavidJanes]] I would like to break this into a separate issue for each currently required element, as we're likely to have to define defaulting rules
* 2009-07-21 [[User:TobyInk|TobyInk]]: Why not have three levels of property: ''required'', ''recommended'' and ''optional''. There would be as few as possible ''required'' properties. Any properties which are needed to create a conformant application/atom+xml feed would be ''recommended''. Everything else would be ''optional''.'
** 2009-07-02 [[User:DavidJanes]] why not then use the RFC MUST, SHOULD and MAY terminology? I think this is a good idea though.
** 2009-09-03 [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]] +1 to the idea of property "levels" and reusing RFC terminology.

==== entry-title optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
*** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] but not recommended.
*** ... your vote here ...
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model value should be
*** the empty string
**** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
**** -1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]]
*** the value should not be blank.
**** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] see: [http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/#requiredEntryElements Required Entry Elements] from Atom Enabled.
**** [[User:DavidJanes]] what should it be then, if physically representing it is optional? Since Atom makes this a SHOULD and not a MUST (I'm not shouting, just following RFC convention), and we're assuming there's a good reason for the entry-title not to be present in the first place, why not an empty string?
***** [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]] entry:title is a required attribute of atom at both feed and entry level, in both instances it says "Contains a human readable title" (a requirement) an empty string is not anything human readable (personal oppinion), maybe hAtom 0.2 should only recommend that the value of entry-title "should" not be an empty string.
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
** +1 [[User:WebOrganics|Martin McEvoy]]

==== updated optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] ... the demand for optionality of the issue is high (cf the microsoft web clips) and if it remains required we're just going to reinvent hAtom without this element
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model should be
*** the page creation date
**** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== author optionality ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2009-07-18 raised by [[User:DavidJanes]]
** this element should be optional
*** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] for the same reason 'updated' should be optional: we'll just reinvent hAtom slightly differently otherwise
*** ... your vote here ...
** if this element is not in the [[hatom#In_General|physical model]], the logical model should be
*** "anonymous" (somewhat like [[hreview]]), except not explicit
**** +0.5 [[User:DavidJanes]]
*** make this implementation defined
*** something constructed from the page's URL & other information
*** ... your proposal here, your vote in a sublist ...
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

=== 2008 ===
==== add url property to hentry ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2008-09-10 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 uses [[rel-bookmark]] for permalinks. Permalinks may not always be hyperlinks or hyperlinkable. Thus I propose we re-use the <code>url</code> property (from [[hCard]], [[hCalendar]], [[hReview]], etc.) as a sub-property of the <code>hentry</code> property/container/root.
*#* Proposed resolution. Add "url" sub-property to "hentry" in hAtom 0.2.
*# {{ToDo}} can anyone provide examples where this would be used? [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== misuse of address element ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2008-06-07 raised by [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*# hAtom 0.1 says "an Entry Author element SHOULD be encoded in an <code><address></code> element" and "find the Nearest In Parent <code><address></code> element(s) with class name author and that is/are a valid hCard" - this is a misuse of the address element. The address element means the ''contact'' for the page or major portion thereof (see [[hcard-faq#Should_I_use_ADDRESS_for_hCards|hCard FAQ: Should I use ADDRESS for hCards]]), which ''may'' also be the ''author'' but is not necessarily. See [[hcards-and-pages]] for more details on this semantic distinction.
*#* Proposed resolution: Eliminate all requirements and recommended use of the <code><address></code> element from hAtom.
*#** +1 --[[User:Csarven|Sarven Capadisli]] 11:57, 11 Nov 2008 (PST)
*#** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

=== 2007 ===
==== marking up comments ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2007-11-25 raised by [http://www.wirewd.com/ Ken Wronkiewicz].
*# There's no currently defined way to exactly handle threaded discussions. I think this is quite useful to have.
*#* The prior art is RFC [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4685 4864]. The microformat solution should map fairly cleanly to this.
* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] I think hAtom Comments should be a separate spec
*** +1 to David's -1. [[User:TobyInk|TobyInk]] They're in a separate RFC, so should be separate to hAtom too. That said, it would be nice if hAtom had a clear, documented mechanism for creating extensions.
** +1 [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]] Comments are the important "next step" for hAtom. The proposal I've seen that I most liked was embedding an hfeed in an hentry.
*** [[User:DavidJanes]] would you look to explicitly write out that proposal here (or in a new section); this is my preferred solution too, but there's another proposal on the table for doing this too

==== atom:category scheme ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2007-06-01 raised by [http://theryanking.com/ Ryan King].
*# ''[[rel-tag#Tag_Spaces|rel-tag tagspaces]] should map to atom:category schemes''
*#* hAtom already defines how to map term and label. It seems that the tagspace can easily map to scheme
*# {{ToDo}} can we get a real-world example mapping of this? [[User:DavidJanes]]

=== 2006 ===
====Geo====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-02-03 raised by [[BrianSuda]]
** We can use the [[geo]] microformat in [[hatom]] to represent GeoRSS element
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]] - this is just making explicit a particular composition. is it not? Also: if there's a geo in a hfeed (outside of hentry), should it be considered to apply to all entries?
* include in hAtom 0.2
** +1 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Relationship of rel-bookmark to url+uid ====
The concept of permalink is available in hCard and hCalendar as the classes url and uid. This combination matches the permalink semantics by indicating that the url should be derefenced to find a more dynamic or up-to-date version of the content, and that that url is a stable unique id that can be used to identify the content.

hAtom 0.1 uses rel-bookmark for the permalink concept. The current state of [[uid-brainstorming]] indicates that the [[hCard]] and [[hCalendar]] permalink concept is likely to be used in subsequent microformats. It may be important to reconcile hAtom with that trajectory. Possible reconcilliations include:

1) To leave things as they are. The two permalink concepts are to be kept separate.

2) Treat the two concepts as equivalent. Allow both in hAtom, and consider allowing both in other formats. eg <a rel="bookmark" href="http://example.com/"> would fill out uid and url values if they are not supplied explicitly.

3) Choose one over the other for hAtom and perhaps for future microformats also. "url uid" allows for some greater freedom (uid can be pointed at a non-url uid), but it is unclear at this stage whether that freedom is warranted or advisable to permit.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] (let's wait for resolution elsewhere, also would need real world examples)
** -1 [[User:Singpolyma|Singpolyma]]

==== Datetime format (atom:updated and atom:published) ====
* 2006-05-23 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** Atom requires the use RFC3339 datetimes, while hAtom 0.1 does not specify which datetime formats may be used.
*** ACCEPTED FAQ - hAtom references datetime-design-pattern, which discusses which date format to use
** 2009-07-20 [[User:DavidJanes]] {{ToDo}} is this moot? can we move this to resolved?

==== Feed id (atom:id) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
*# atom:id is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to.

It is suggested the Feed permalink should be used as the feed ID, however a piece by Mark Pilgrim (http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/28/howto-atom-id) makes arguments against using permalinks and in favour of Tag URIs.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] not enough development of these ideas yes

==== Feed permalink (atom:permalink) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** I'm proposing the following rules:
**# a Feed Permalink element is identified by [[rel-bookmark]] at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# a Feed <del>SHOULD</del><ins>MAY</ins> have a Feed Permalink
**# a Feed Permalink element represents the concept of an Atom link in a feed.
**# if the Feed Permalink is missing, use the URI of the page; if the Feed has an "id" attribute, add that as a fragment to the page URI
** 2006-04-03 [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] - I'm not sure that having a rel-boomkark-able link element at the feed level / to designate a feed in an html page separate for the other content is anything close to normal usage on the web, so I'd be very hesitant on suggesting this element "SHOULD" exist. I'm also curious when this element would link to anything but the current page (or some element on the current page) for this to be useful in the context of the HTML doc. I think taking the "id" on the feed is a more workable solution in most cases.
** 2006-04-03 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: I've replaced "SHOULD" with "MAY".
** 2006-04-24 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Maybe we could simplify my proposal to:
*** "''Use the URI of the page; if the Feed has an "id" attribute, add that as a fragment to the page URI''"
*** IMO this would be good enough for at least 80% of the cases.
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]]: {{ToDo}} can we find an example of this in the wild and if so we should add it to the -examples page.
** [[User:Singpolyma|singpolyma]] 00:05, 13 Apr 2006 (PDT) : since the link is going to be pointing to the home page for the item wouldn't [[rel-home]] make more sense? That's what I'm using in the XOXO Blog Format and my reasoning was that if hAtom ever defined this rel=home made the most sense for what you would add, because the feed's link is not to a part of the site by to the home of the site.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** -1 [[User:DavidJanes]] not enough development of these ideas yes

==== Feed updated (atom:updated) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:updated is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. I'm proposing the following rules:
**# The Feed Updated element is identified by the class name <code>updated</code> at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# If no element with the class name <code>updated</code> is present, use the youngest <code>updated</code> from the feed's entries.
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]] I like this. And the definition of "feed level"
** 2007-06-20 [[User:MikeKaply]] The "youngest" thing is a really bad idea. If a page has 100 hAtom entries, a parser would have to go through all 100 looking for a low date. That's crazy.
*** 2008-03-20 [[User:TobyInk]] Not crazy at all. I've just implemented an hAtom to Atom converter and I do precisely this. Most (useful) hAtom parsers will "go through all 100 entries" anyway, won't they? So why not look for the youngest updated date as part of that loop. The only slight annoyance is that in RFC 4287, the <atom:updated> element must occur before the first <atom:entry> element -- this is easily solved by inserting a placeholder <atom:updated> element, looping through the entries and then going back and filling in the date. This is really, really, '''not''' a difficult thing to implement.

* include in hAtom 0.2
** +0.5 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Feed title (atom:title) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:title is required for atom:feed. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. I'm proposing the following rules:
**# a Feed Title element is identified by the class name <code><del>entry</del><ins>feed</ins>-title</code>
**# a Feed SHOULD have an Feed Title
**# a Feed Title element represents the concept of an Atom feed title
**# if the Feed Title is missing, use
**#* <del>the first <code><h#></code> element in the Feed, or</del>
**#* the <code><title></code> of the page, or
**#* assume it is the empty string
** 2006-04-01 [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] - I think that the fall back to using the first h# on the page is dangerous.. depending on the pge it may be something that changes often (first h# is a post title) or is otherwise ambiguous. I would think using <code><title></code> before h# would be prefered if not the most common desire of the page author.
** 2006-04-05 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Okay. Deleted "the first <code><h#></code> element in the Feed, or"
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]] Note also in support of this decision that many blogs use <code><h#></code> to encode the date for a group of postings
** 2006-04-12 [[User:DavidJanes]]: why <code>entry-title</code> for the feed title. Why not <code>fn</code> or <code>feed-title</code>?
** 2006-04-12 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: Sorry, this was a "copy & paste" mistake. Fixed now.
** 2007-02-26 [[User:MikeKaply|Mike Kaply]]: I think a feed title should be mandatory if an hfeed is present. If you have multiple feeds on a page, there is no way in a user interface to distinguish between different feeds.

==== Feed author and Entry author (atom:author) ====
* {{OpenIssue}} 2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** I'm proposing the following rules for Feed author:
**# a Feed Author element is represented by class name <code>author</code> at the feed level (inside a Feed element but not inside an Entry element)
**# a Feed Author element represents the concept of a Atom author
**# a Feed Author element MUST be encoded in a [[hcard|hCard]]
**# a Feed Author element SHOULD be encoded in a <code><address></code> element
**# a Feed MAY have more than one Feed Author elements
**# if the Feed Author is missing
**#* find the [[algorithm-nearest-in-parent|Nearest In Parent]] <code><address></code> element(s) with class name <code>author</code> and that is/are a valid [[hcard|hCard]]
**#* otherwise <del>the Feed is invalid hAtom</del> <ins>there is no Feed Author</ins>
** I'm proposing the following rules for entry author:
**# an Entry Author element is represented by class name <code>author</code>
**# an Entry Author element represents the concept of an Atom author
**# an Entry Author element MUST be encoded in an [[hcard|hCard]]
**# an Entry Author element SHOULD be encoded in an <code><address></code> element
**#<del> If a Feed has no Feed author each Entry MUST have at least one Entry Author element</del>
**# <ins>If an Entry is enclosed by a Feed and this Feed has no Feed author, each Entry MUST have at least one Entry Author element. If an Entry is not enclosed by a Feed and has no Entry Author:
**#* find the [[algorithm-nearest-in-parent|Nearest In Parent]] <code><address></code> element(s) with class name <code>author</code> and that is/are a valid [[hcard|hCard]]
**#* otherwise the Entry is invalid hAtom</ins>
**# an Entry MAY have more than one Entry Author elements
** [[User:Singpolyma|singpolyma]] 00:11, 13 Apr 2006 (PDT) : feed should not be invalid hAtom if feed-level has no author -- it should be invalid if feed-level has no author AND one or more entries have no author. Also, one or more entries may be missing an author IF feed-level has an author.
** 2006-04-17 [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]: I replaced "the Feed is invalid hAtom" with "there is no Feed Author"

==== Entry id (atom:id) ====
* {{OpenIssue}}2006-04-01 raised by [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
** atom:id is required for atom:entry. Thus it should be available in hAtom to. The Entry permalink should be used as the entry id.
** --[[User:Federico|Federico]] 19:52, 25 Apr 2006 (PDT): I would add "Only if the id attribute is not defined for the element that contains the entry". The id attribute can be a tag uri. If you use always use the Entry permalink as the entry id and the Atom feed uses tag uris, you would end with two different ids for the same entry.
** 2006-12-31 response by [[User:ComputerKid|Emanla Eraton]] No, it shouldn't be a permalink. It should be a "tag:" id for entries.
** 2007-06-06 [[RyanKing]] - the syntax of tag URIs and html id attributes are incompatible. HTML disallows forward-slash (/) in ids [http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-name], while tag URIs require them [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc4151.html].

==== Author ====
===== author as an hcard is too much to require =====
The following 3 items were extracted from the conversation starting on irc with [http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-03-24#T152248 logs available starting around here]

* [[User:Fil|Fil]] If, for example, you are programming an "aggregator" of news syndicated from many sources like in [http://sedna.spip.org/sedna/ Sedna], chances are that you don't control what "authors" look like; they can be nicely microformated (if coming from an mf-enabled system), but most probably they will be internally represented by a string that contains, in some random order, a name, and/or an email, and so on. If you want to pass on this information in an hAtom feed, you can't possibly reformat it to an hCard. But you still want to pass it on in a <div class="author"> element.
** [[Tantek]] I don't believe the "can't possibly" statement. Please provide a URL to a concrete example that you think you can't possibly reformat into an hCard so we can all take a look.
** [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] details of Fil's extraction [http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-03-24#T153453 in irc logs] including sting data passed to his app in the form of "Béatrice XXXXXXX beatrice.xxxxxx@@zzzzzzzzz.com"
** [[User:Fil|Fil]] the example url was given up there (Sedna); note that the author information comes from syndication links; nobody is going to edit them to outline what is the name, what is the email and so on, as everything is flowing through automatically... so here the "author" data is dirty, and will not be cleaned into an hCard. We can force it to be in an hCard but it will be meaningless if the source (original data) wasn't built on an mf-enabled software.

* [[pnhChris]] i don't disagree.. the field often comes from places too dumb to follow these rules well; even cases like wordpress that allow users to present their name 1 of 6 or 8 difference ways (from username to LF, FN) .. its not just writing a template to output as hatom at that point... you have to go further upstream where the string to be displayed is chosen .. I also think its pointless to have 10 vcards on the same page whose only data is a generic name like "Chris"
** [[Tantek]] 10 vcards that are the same is pointless yes, but identifying who the author of 10 posts are is not pointless - that's the difference.
** [[User:ChrisCasciano|ChrisCasciano]] Agreed, but I still have concerns that "author" in hAtom does not always make for good hCards, though the situations where it does is optimal. My comments in the conversation were old comments I've made before over concerns and hardships or the lack of desire to make crappy data more portable, in neither of these cases do I think my two comments alone provide reasons to make change from the hAtom 0.1 spec
***[[User:Phae|Frances]] - Just thought I'd mention a scenario I have where the author of an entry does make a pretty useless vCard - the author in each case is an entire team ("creative team", "technical department") etc., rather than a specific, identifiable, person. Some use may be regained when URL to specific team/information is included, in this circumstance.
****[[User:TobyInk]] - A vCard (thus an hCard) does not have to represent a person -- it could represent an organisation, or a department or team.
* [[User:Fil|Fil]] for the moment, to comply losely with hAtom 0.1, I will use <code><nowiki>My Name</nowiki></code> ; but it's not good
** [[Tantek]] You can actually simplify that (one fewer span) with: <code><nowiki>My Name</nowiki></code>

* require author as [[hCard]] (i.e. no change from 0.1)
** +2 [[User:DavidJanes]]

==== Entry source (atom:source) ====
* raised by [[User:Kevin Marks|Kevin Marks]]
** When defining hAtom 0.1, atom:source was omitted. We should consider adding this back in as a useful element for providing citations of composite feeds.
*** 2009-07-20 [[User:DavidJanes]] {{ToDo}} we need an example of how this would look in the real world

== Other Questions and Issues ==
General comments, modeling issues, algorithm issues, should have issues, etc. go here.

=== Entry Updated Required? -- Blogger Issue ===
moved to [[hatom-brainstorming]]

=== 'MAY have multiple Feed elements' -- details and viability of multiple feeds ===
moved to [[hatom-brainstorming]]

== pre 0.1 issues ==
'''This section is more or less closed, as hAtom 0.1 is out the door. If there are open issues that you are championing that didn't make it into hAtom 0.1, move them up above to the hAtom 0.2 section'''

See: [[hatom-issues-pre-0.1]]

== Template ==
{{issues-format}}

== See Also ==
* [[hatom|hAtom]] - the draft proposal
* [[hatom-faq]] - knowledge base
* [[hatom-issues-resolved]]
* [[blog-post-brainstorming]]
* [[blog-post-formats]]
* [[blog-post-examples]]
* [[blog-description-format]] - how to describe a blog (as opposed to the individual entries, which is what we're doing here)
* [[mfo-examples]]
* [[naming-principles]]

dtend-issue

2009-09-02T20:39:46Z

Chris Cressman: Added my opinion to support inclusive dates.

<entry-title>dtend-issue</entry-title>

An [[hCalendar]] issue.

== summary ==

The [[hCalendar]] dtend property as of hCalendar 1.0 requires that end *dates* be marked up as occuring a whole day after what people typically consider the end date of an event.

E.g. if a conference starts on 2010 March 12th and ends 2010 March 16th, then the dtend must be marked up with the value of "2010-03-17" - seemingly a whole day after the end of the conference. hCalendar suggests obscuring this disparity between the human visible end date and the machine specified date using the <code><nowiki><abbr></nowiki></code> tag:

<source lang=html4strict>
<div class="vevent">
a conference
starts on 2010-03-12, and
ends on <abbr class="dtend" title="2010-03-17">2010-03-16</abbr>.
</div>
</source>

This is due to hCalendar being originally specified with the same semantics as iCalendar, which places that requirement on the DTEND property of the VEVENT object.

== problems ==
This is problematic for several reasons:
* '''Appears inconsistent.''' It is odd that the value specified for machine consumption is different than the value specified for human consumption - regardless of format/syntax - and appears inconsistent to anyone who sees the tooltip, or views and copy/pastes the source. It looks like a bug or mistake, and in fact has been errantly "corrected" as such (e.g. even in the hCalendar spec itself).
* '''Unintuitive for authoring.''' When authors are writing up the end date for an event, they write up what a human expects to see - the last day of the event. It is an unintuitive leap to think to specify +1 day for machine consumption, and an additional cognitive load (in order to get it right).
* '''Semantic abuse of abbr.''' An abbr's title attribute provides an expansion for the inner text. In no way is a +1 date an expansion of a date, it appears more like a completely different value.
* '''Required DRY violation.''' While the <code>dtstart</code> in the above example is specified only once, readable to both humans and machines, the dtend must be specified twice, once for humans, and once for machines, thus requiring a particularly bad DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) violation, that of requiring data be specified twice, but slightly different in one instance than another, thus increasing the chances of duplication based errors even more (since verifiability is more difficult).
** '''Prevents use of simple markup''' As a result of the forced DRY violation, it is not possible to use simple markup like <code><nowiki>2010-03-16</nowiki></code> because while a human reads that as an event that ends on the 16th, an hCalendar 1.0 processor will read that as an event that ended the day before, on the 15th.

== possible solutions ==
As noted in the [[hcalendar-issues#issues_2007|issue description]] on the hCalendar issues page, there are at least a couple of possible solutions.

<div class="discussion">
* '''new hCalendar 1.0.1 property for end dates'''. As noted in the first resolution of the issue, we could introduce a new property, '''dtlast''' (described more in [[hcalendar-brainstorming#dtlast|hCalendar brainstorming: dtlast]]) which authors would use to specify the ''last'' day of an event, instead of dtend.
** Advantage: Maintains iCalendar conceptual compatibility for DTEND values.
** Advantage: Compatibility with existing hCalendar 1.0 content that just happened to get the end date +1 distinction right.
** ... any other advantages?
** Disadvantage: Increased vocabulary. '''dtlast''' is a new term, even if it is not new functionality. Essentially this puts additional burden on authors.
** Disadvantage: Increased complexity/confusion. When to use dtend vs. dtlast? hCalendar authors would now have to remember, use dtend for end *times* and dtlast for end *dates*. More explanation of the additional burden on authors.
** ... any other disadvantages?
** Opinions:
*** -1 despite originally proposing this solution, I now think an additional term, and rule for when to use the new term vs. the old term will actually make this problem worse and more confusing to web authors. [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*** ... please add your +1/0/-1 opinion here and sign with three tildas (<nowiki>~~~</nowiki>)
* '''redefine hCalendar 1.0.1 dtend to be inclusive for whole dates'''. This is a bit more radical.
** Advantage: Zero impact on vocabulary.
** Advantage: No increase to hCalendar authoring complexity.
** Advantage: Will reflect dominant use of dtend in examples in the wild (more research and citations needed to back this up!). In other words, authors have ALREADY been using dtend assuming it works this way (inclusive end dates), and will actually be surprised to find out that it doesn't. Making this change to DTEND semantics may actually reflect hCalendar publishing reality more than keeping the precise iCalendar DTEND semantic. Examples of inclusive dtend usage in the wild:
*** http://barcamp.org/ - BarCamp wiki, dates for BarCamps
*** [[event|microformats.org/wiki/events/]] - several multi-day event listings, as recently as Glenn Jones (who himself is a ''very'' knowledgable and prolific microformats developer) [[events/2010-03-12-sxsw|event page for SXSW 2010]] use inclusive DTENDs (notably, using a span element that does NOT duplicate content).
*** draft of Emily Lewis' book <cite>Microformats Made Simple</cite>, uses dtend for inclusive end dates.
*** microformats.org co-founder and expert [http://simplebits.com/ Dan Cederholm's home page] has an events calendar that uses inclusive dtend dates.
*** ... more instances of existing use of DTEND for *inclusive* end dates.
** Advantage: Some number of implementations treat DTEND dates as *inclusive* (technically these are violating the current hCalendar spec, but they may be doing so deliberately to reflect actual hCalendar publishing practices). Implementations
*** Google's Rich Snippet validator. The [http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmicroformats.org%2Fwiki%2Fevents Rich Snippet validator on microformats.org/wiki/events] shows the SXSW event as ending on 2010-03-16, consistent with the published intent.
*** ... more implementations that treat hCalendar dtend dates as inclusive
** ... any other advantages?
** Disadvantage: Redefines DTEND to be *slightly* different from how it is defined in iCalendar. This may lead to errors on the part of developers.
*** Mitigation: it may be possible to mitigate this disadvantage by providing ''both'' very precise hCalendar to iCalendar processor conformance requirements, and sufficient test cases for hCalendar to iCalendar processors for them to get this correct in their code.
** Disadvantage: breaking some amount of existing hCalendar content on the web (research needed to determine the extent of the problem)
*** Workarounds: Based on aforementioned research, workarounds may be possible, e.g. heuristics for when abbr is used similar to the example at the top of the page, to detect "off by one" cases and accommodate accordingly). Make it an explicit error for the human visible date to be different than the machine parsed date, and state specific error handling rules for hCalendar processors that "repair" this problem.
** ... any other disadvantages?
** Opinions:
*** +1 Based on the fact that this problem just hasn't gone away, and that people (smart knowledgable people!) continue to treat "dtend" end dates *inclusively*, I now think it makes more sense (and is more practical) to change the spec to be consistent with the dominant expectation of web authors, rather than continue attempting to change the expectations of web authors to be consistent with the spec. I think this is the simplest, most effective, and least risky option. [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]
*** +1 This appears logical and intuitive. We are effectively saying that end dates such as <code>DTEND</code> should parse to <code>YYYY-MM-DDT24:00:00</code>, and not <code>YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00</code>. Seems simple, and entirely logical from a publishing stand —[[User:BenWard|BenWard]] 08:18, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
*** +1 The spec should reflect the intuitive publishing behaviour (inclusive end dates). Humans first. —[[User:Adactio|Jeremy Keith]]
*** +1 Though I'm worried about tools catching up to this change. [[User:EdwardOConnor|Ted]]
*** +1 The natural human way to think about dates is inclusively; if the dtend date and dtstart date are equal, that clearly doesn't imply zero duration. The microformats principle of making things easier for authors rather than parser writers wins here [[User:Kevin Marks|Kevin Marks]]
*** +1 It is much easier to migrate the limited number of tools and authors who already grok hCalendar 1.0 than to migrate publisher intuition. [[User:MatthewLevine|MatthewLevine]]
*** +1 I agree with MatthewLevine. Those who follow hCalendar development are likely to make the change to inclusive dates, and those who don't are likely using inclusive dates already. [[User:Chris Cressman|Chris Cressman]]
*** ... please add your +1/0/-1 opinion here and sign with three tildas (<nowiki>~~~</nowiki>)
* ... other possible solutions?
</div>

== origins ==
This issue was raised to me (Tantek) in person pretty much since the first time I gave such an example back in 2004, was something I had to explicitly cover and point out in nearly every microformats [[presentation]] I gave, was eventually pointed out on the microformats discuss mailing list (citation needed), and eventually explicitly documented as an issue on the wiki [[hcalendar-issues]] page by Andy Mabbett on 2007-01-20.

== see also ==
* [[hCalendar]]
* [[hcalendar-issues]]
* [[iCalendar]]

User:Chris Cressman

2009-03-23T20:25:20Z

Chris Cressman: Added public domain declaration

*Web professional, nonprofit sector, USA.
*[http://chriscressman.com/ http://chriscressman.com/]

{{cc-public-domain-release}}

irc-people

2009-01-25T17:07:35Z

Chris Cressman: Added my name.

A list of [[irc|IRC]] regulars, sorted by nick, and their normal timezones (winter/summer).

* {{irc user|Amodal1| amodal1|-0500/-0600}}
* {{irc user|Adam Ballai|AdamBallai|-700/-700}}
* {{irc user|Adam Craven|AdamCraven|+0000}}
* {{irc user|Alexander Graf|AlexanderGraf|+0100}}
* {{irc user|Tomasino|aloneone|-0500}}
* {{irc user|AmanuelTewolde|Amanuel|-0500/-0400}}
* {{irc user|Amette|amette|+1000}}
* {{irc user|Amir Guindehi|AmirGuindehi|+1000}}
* {{irc user|Andr3|andr3|+0000}}
* {{irc user|Ajaswa|Andrew Jaswa|-0500}}
* {{irc user|AndrewDisley|AndrewDisley|+0000}}
* {{irc user|Andrii Ponomarov|Andrii|+0300}}
* {{irc user|AnselHalliburton|anselxyz|-0800/-0700}}
* {{irc user|Ashe Dryden|Ashe|-600}}
* {{irc user|Atamido|Atamido|-0600/-0500}}
* {{irc user|Barce|Barce|-0800/-0700}}
* {{irc user|Azathoth|Florian Beer|+1000}}
* {{irc user|Tyler Roehmholdt|Baristo|-0800/-0700}}
* {{irc user|BenjaminCarlyle|BenjaminCarlyle|+1000}}
* {{irc user|HenriBergius|bergie|+0200/+0300}}
* {{irc user|Ben Ward|BenWard|+0000}}
* {{irc user|BenWest|bewest|-0800/-0700}}
* {{irc user|B.K._DeLong|bkdelong|-0500/-0400}}
* {{irc user|Robert|blueace|+0100}}
* {{irc user|Robert|blueace|+0100}}
* {{irc user|BluesMoon|bluesmoon|+0530}}
* {{irc user|BobChao|BobChao|+0800}}
* {{irc user|Bob Jonkman|BobJonkman|-0500/-0400}}
* {{irc user|Boneill|boneill|+0000}}
* {{irc user|Brian|briansuda|+0000}}
* {{irc user|TimT|bringo|-0800/-0700}}
* {{irc user|Briski|Briski|+0000}}
* {{irc user|BryanL|BryanL|-0500/-0400}}
* {{irc user|BryanRieger|Bryan Rieger|+0000}}
* {{irc user|Bug-E|Bug-E|+0200}}
* {{irc user|CarlaHufstedler|carlamagpie|-0500/-0400}}
* {{irc user|Colin_Barrett|cbarrett|-1000}}
* {{irc user|Cognizance|Cognizance|-0800/-0700}}
* {{irc user|ColinDDevroe|cdevroe|-0500/-0600}}
* {{irc user|Cgriego|cgriego|-0600/-0500}}
* {{irc user|Charlvn|Charl|+0200/+0200}}
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User:Chris Cressman

2009-01-25T17:00:04Z

Chris Cressman: Added a brief description of me and a link to my website for more info.

*Web professional, nonprofit sector, USA.
*[http://chriscressman.com/ http://chriscressman.com/]