[
note: this is a continuance from a bulletin board thread started here:
http://www.movabletype.org/support/ib3/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST&f=12&t=246
More on the initial brewing of this topic/implementation is here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/syndic8/message/1289 and also here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/syndic8/message/1304 All further
quotes in this message come from the MT thread.
]

>Yes, RDF would provide greater meta data possiblities.
>There's no defined format for a generator, however.

See http://ilrt.org/discovery/chatlogs/rdfig/2001-05-27.txt (where the
quote below is from) as well as http://webns.net/mvcb/generatorAgent :

17:03:05 <dc_rdfig> A: ops:errorReportsTo and ops:generatorAgent
17:05:37 <kmacleod> A:These came up in a discussion of RSS. When you have
many providers of RSS (RDF) you often have situations where users or their
software create files that have errors in either their use of RDF, the
schema used, or even XML itself.
17:08:01 <kmacleod> A:ops:generatorAgent would be the URI of the software,
if any, used to generate the RDF.

>So here's the situation, put in a comment and your feed will be counted.
>The alternatives are to open up a whole debate on the next generation of
>simple RSS or to use RDF. Which one's easiest?

It's easier to shoot my girlfriend then to calmly rationalize with her.

>There's plenty reasons to NOT allow a consuming client to see this data.
>The single biggest reason is one with which you're doubtlessly familiar.
>And that's to not allow the client programs to start 'special casing' their
>treatment of the feeds.

Well, if you're gunning for something that isn't easily recognized by
client parsers (and usable by only those that specifically code for it,
like Syndic8), then at least try and make it valid with the XML itself.

The easiest would be to simply remove the DOCTYPE from the feed itself,
then add an ops:generatorAgent as an attribute somewhere. You say elsewhere
that most client apps don't validate by DOCTYPE, and this certainly has
credence based on the NS/Doctype Removal Event (tm). Another option would
be processing instructions [1], which are like comments, but structured.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#sec-pi

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