I noticed today that .NET 2.0 doesn't recognize the PST timezone when
parsing RFC 822 datetimes. Since many RSS readers use .NET, I suspect
there might be a broad problem with its use and our recommendation.
http://www.rssboard.org/rss-profile#data-types-datetime
If you have a .NET RSS reader, then please test and respond with
results. Sample RSS feed.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ClagnutBlogmarks
Thanks,
Randy
If this proves to be a problem, then some may consider adding a warning
in the Feed Validator.
Thanks,
Randy
--- In rss-public@yahoogroups.com, "Randy Morin" <randy@...> wrote:
>
> I noticed today that .NET 2.0 doesn't recognize the PST timezone when
> parsing RFC 822 datetimes. Since many RSS readers use .NET, I suspect
> there might be a broad problem with its use and our recommendation.
>
> http://www.rssboard.org/rss-profile#data-types-datetime
>
> If you have a .NET RSS reader, then please test and respond with
> results. Sample RSS feed.
>
> http://feeds.feedburner.com/ClagnutBlogmarks
>
> Thanks,
>
> Randy
>
> I noticed today that .NET 2.0 doesn't recognize the PST timezone when
> parsing RFC 822 datetimes. Since many RSS readers use .NET, I suspect
> there might be a broad problem with its use and our recommendation.
And you base this on what? It seems rather unlikely that the framework is
to blame. Are you certain the date is properly formatted? Given the morass
that is 822 timestamps I'd wonder.
-Bill Kearney
Syndic8.com
Bill Kearney wrote:
>
>> I noticed today that .NET 2.0 doesn't recognize the PST timezone when
>> parsing RFC 822 datetimes. Since many RSS readers use .NET, I suspect
>> there might be a broad problem with its use and our recommendation.
>
> And you base this on what? It seems rather unlikely that the framework is
> to blame. Are you certain the date is properly formatted? Given the morass
> that is 822 timestamps I'd wonder.
I believe that the datetimes that are present in that feed at the moment
are valid. That being said, it does seem unlikely that nothing in the
entire .Net framework can handle such dates properly. But the .Net
framework is a big place, so perhaps if Randy could provide a bit more
information about which specific API in that framework he considers to
be potentially busted, I could help investigate further. Actually, I
imagine that James might be in a better position than me, as I believe
that he has accrued a set of technical legal but in practice very
problematic examples of RFC [2]822 formatted dates.
- Sam Ruby
Convert.ToDateTime
--- In rss-public@yahoogroups.com, Sam Ruby <rubys@...> wrote:
> I believe that the datetimes that are present in that feed at the
moment
> are valid. That being said, it does seem unlikely that nothing in
the
> entire .Net framework can handle such dates properly. But the .Net
> framework is a big place, so perhaps if Randy could provide a bit
more
> information about which specific API in that framework he considers
to
> be potentially busted, I could help investigate further.
Randy Morin wrote:
>
> Convert.ToDateTime
Interesting. The top Google hit on "convert.todatetime rfc822" is a
post of your from three years ago. I'm traveling tomorrow, but I might
be able to take a look into this a bit this weekend.
- Sam Ruby
Sam Ruby wrote:
> I imagine that James might be in a better position than me, as I believe
> that he has accrued a set of technical legal but in practice very
> problematic examples of RFC [2]822 formatted dates.
Back when I tested dates, there were a couple of aggregators that didn't
understand U.S. timezones (not just PST though). RssReader (which I believe
uses .NET) was one of those affected. However, not all .NET aggregators were
affected (RSS Bandit, for example, was fine).
Regards
James
The .NET System.DateTime.Parse method and Convert.ToDateTime method seem not
understanding all obs-zone defined in Section 4.3 of RFC 2822 except "GMT"
and "Z".
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822#section-4.3
Tested with the following code:
class TimeConvert {
private static void Main() {
System.Console.Write("Please enter a time string: ");
string strDateTime=System.Console.ReadLine();
System.DateTime dateTime;
try {
dateTime=System.DateTime.Parse(strDateTime);
}
catch(System.FormatException) {
System.Console.WriteLine("Invalid format.");
return;
}
System.DateTime univDateTime=dateTime.ToUniversalTime();
System.Console.WriteLine(univDateTime+" UTC");
}
}
-Franklin
--------------------------------------------------
From: "James Holderness" <j4_james@...>
Date: Friday, 07 December, 2007 10:20
To: <rss-public@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [rss-public] PST Timezone in .NET 2.0
> Sam Ruby wrote:
>> I imagine that James might be in a better position than me, as I believe
>> that he has accrued a set of technical legal but in practice very
>> problematic examples of RFC [2]822 formatted dates.
>
> Back when I tested dates, there were a couple of aggregators that didn't
> understand U.S. timezones (not just PST though). RssReader (which I
> believe
> uses .NET) was one of those affected. However, not all .NET aggregators
> were
> affected (RSS Bandit, for example, was fine).
>
> Regards
> James
>
James Holderness wrote:
> Sam Ruby wrote:
>> I imagine that James might be in a better position than me, as I believe
>> that he has accrued a set of technical legal but in practice very
>> problematic examples of RFC [2]822 formatted dates.
>
> Back when I tested dates, there were a couple of aggregators that didn't
> understand U.S. timezones (not just PST though). RssReader (which I believe
> uses .NET) was one of those affected. However, not all .NET aggregators were
> affected (RSS Bandit, for example, was fine).
I found the following on RSS Bandit:
http://www.rendelmann.info/blog/2003/05/13/again+And+Again.aspxhttp://tinyurl.com/2l3w2p
- Sam Ruby
I am having problems with my rss feed for my pod cast. my feed is
http://www.passionchurch.tv/podcast/itunesrss.xml. I have tested it in
feed validator and I keep getting this error message: "Sorry
This feed does not validate.
line 264, column 2: XML parsing error: <unknown>:264:2: mismatched tag
[help]
</item> ^"
However, it is the same as the other parts of my feed and they work
fine.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have tried everything and
don't know what to fix. Thanks.
Steve.
I am using feed validator and it says that my feed in not valid. It
shows a line error but I can't seem to figure out what is wrong. My
feed is http://www.passionchurch.tv/podcast/itunesrss.xml any help
would be greatly appreciated. This issue is keeping my current
podcasts from posting on itunes.
steve
I just checked and I'm not getting the error. Hopefully, you fixed it.
Thanks,
Randy
--- In rss-public@yahoogroups.com, "steveely3330" <pastorsteve@...>
wrote:
>
> I am having problems with my rss feed for my pod cast. my feed is
> http://www.passionchurch.tv/podcast/itunesrss.xml. I have tested
it in
> feed validator and I keep getting this error message: "Sorry
> This feed does not validate.
>
> line 264, column 2: XML parsing error: <unknown>:264:2: mismatched
tag
> [help]
>
> </item> ^"
>
> However, it is the same as the other parts of my feed and they work
> fine.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have tried everything and
> don't know what to fix. Thanks.
>
> Steve.
>
There was discussion in the time leading up to the vote on the 1.0
version of the profile about work for the second edition (which was
referred to as "1.1") — as far as I can see nothing at all has
happened about this (I expect due to time constraints). I'm more than
happy to take over work on co-editing the document (though I wouldn't
be able to do much for a week or so), but I would much rather see some
quite large changes (splitting up publisher/aggregator requirements
into different headers, and expanding the latter in many cases to
cover non-conforming content) — if I am to contribute to it, should I
work from the actual source sent to the browser, or something else?
Finally (and most likely most controversially), I would like to see
all the namespace advice be gone — at most list a few recommended
namespaces, but don't attempt to define them at all.
--
Geoffrey Sneddon
<http://gsnedders.com/>
Mads Hjorth wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am trying to parse some feeds using the validator on
http://validator.w3.org/feed/
>
> My example does not validate, and I expect an error in the validator.
The validator message in this case is correct as it reflects the
behavior specified by the relevant specifications.
> When I include a date in a lastBuildDate field, with a timezone of CET
> my feed does not validate.
>
> <lastBuildDate>Wed, 02 Oct 2002 08:00:00 CET</lastBuildDate> leads
> to "lastBuildDate must be an RFC-822 date-time"
>
> where as
>
> <lastBuildDate>Wed, 02 Oct 2002 08:00:00 EST</lastBuildDate> does
> validate.
>
> I am not sure why Eastern Standard Time is valid and Central European
> Time is not. <deep breath, diving into RFC-822 -> ANSI X3.51-1975 ->
> FIPS 59, deep breath>
>
> It turns out that the only valid identifiers for time zones are UT/GMT
> and EST/CST/MST/PST. <Insert rant about culture biased standards here!>
>
> It seems I am left with +0100 as a time zone for Copenhagen, Denmark.
> In the ansi standard all that is mentioned about this format, is
> "Local differential hours+min. (HHMM)".
>
> Does this mean an offset to GMT?
>
> Don't I loose alot of information about my timezone, by only
> referencing an offset? What about Daylight Saving etc...
>
> What is the best practice for adding date information to feeds
> originating from outside of the few named timezones in the applied
> standards.
>
> Is it way out of hand to recommend an ISO 8601 date instead?
Both RSS 1.0 and the Atom formats use ISO 8601 based dates and times.
Both ISO 8601 and RFC 822 based timestamps support offset from GMT as a
notation.
If you would like to discuss recommendations for RSS 2.0, I would
suggest pursuing that on the RSS Advisory Board mailing list. The feed
validator already produces a number of recommendations based on their
best practices profile.
> Regards
>
> Mads Hjorth
> External Lecturer, OOP. IT University of Copenhagen.
> www : www.itu.dk/people/madsh
> mail : madsh@...
- Sam Ruby
>> Don't I loose alot of information about my timezone, by only
>> referencing an offset? What about Daylight Saving etc...
You're assuming that information would be something you could reliably
extract from such a thing. You cannot. It's a common mistake, to assume
timezone info connotes anything other than time. It doesn't indicate region
or any other geographic data. Lots of folks make this assumption, however
incorrect it continues to be. It'd be nice if geo-data was available, but
the timezone isn't the place to get it.
As for DST calculations, those can't be extracted from this either. DST
varies FAR MORE than you can possibly imagine. A good number of programming
tools actually get it wrong when making calculations based on timezone
during a different interval (as in, summer timestamps during a winter tz
offset).
In the end you're far better off using the numeric offsets. Which are
offsets from UTC, as it's actually possible for GMT itself to be offset due
to daylight savings. Yes, you will get a big headache learning what a mess
timezones really are...
-Bill Kearney
Mads Hjorth wrote:
> Is it way out of hand to recommend an ISO 8601 date instead?
In an RSS 2.0 feed, yes. The RSS 2.0 spec clearly says that dates should be
in the form described in RFC 822 (with the additional requirement that years
use four digits). If you just choose your own format at random, how would
you expect an RSS reader to understand what you meant?
In short, if you want your dates to be understood, stick to the format as
specified.
If you really find RFC 822 dates that offensive, you could always choose an
entirely different feed format as Sam has suggested. Either way, though,
you're never going to be able to use CET as a timezone.
Bill Kearney wrote:
> In the end you're far better off using the numeric offsets. Which are
> offsets from UTC, as it's actually possible for GMT itself to be offset
> due
> to daylight savings.
Perhaps I've misunderstood what you're saying, but just to be clear, GMT
never changes as a result of daylight savings. Britain does have a form of
daylight savings (referred to as British Summer Time or BST), but that is
defined as GMT+1 (GMT itself doesn't change).
As I understand it, the difference between UTC and GMT has to do with atomic
time measurement vs. astronomical calculations. For the most part the
differences are insignificant.
Regards
James
It appears that implementing an RSS news reader may be a lot of work to do. At
least when
one reads the web page
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/04/incompatible-rss
Is the above mentioned web page accurate in its description of incompatibility?
On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 1:35 PM, James Holderness <j4_james@...> wrote:
>
> Perhaps I've misunderstood what you're saying, but just to be clear, GMT
> never changes as a result of daylight savings. Britain does have a form of
> daylight savings (referred to as British Summer Time or BST), but that is
> defined as GMT+1 (GMT itself doesn't change).
James is correct.
> As I understand it, the difference between UTC and GMT has to do with
> atomic
> time measurement vs. astronomical calculations. For the most part the
> differences are insignificant.
GMT [1] and UTC [2] have been the same thing since 1972 (also referred
to as 'Zulu' time - hence the 'Z' you sometimes see appended to UTC
date/time stamps).
The 'C' in UTC refers to co-ordination by the "International Earth
Rotation and Reference Systems Service" [3] of atomic clocks in
Greenwich, Paris and at the US Naval Observatory (which then updates
the GPS satellites so we don't get lost using our geo-location
gizmos).
[1] http://wikipedia.org/wiki/GMT
[2] http://wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC
[3] http://wikipedia.org/wiki/IERS
Regards,
Alan Dean
http://thoughtpad.net/alan-deanhttp://simplewebservices.org
--- In rss-public@yahoogroups.com, Geoffrey Sneddon <foolistbar@...>
wrote:
> There was discussion in the time leading up to the vote on the 1.0
> version of the profile about work for the second edition (which was
> referred to as "1.1") — as far as I can see nothing at all has
> happened about this (I expect due to time constraints).
I think it would be a mistake to begin a new version of the profile so
soon. If people think it's a moving target, they'll be less likely to
implement the suggestions.
We've been focusing on helping developers and publishers implement the
profile, and have had success in that area. Since it was published in
October, both Six Apart and Wordpress have made changes to pass all
profile-related checks in the Feed Validator.
gunnarsunshine wrote:
> It appears that implementing an RSS news reader may be a lot of work to
> do. At least when
> one reads the web page
> http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/04/incompatible-rss
>
> Is the above mentioned web page accurate in its description of
> incompatibility?
I don't believe there's anything factually inaccurate on that page, however
the practical implications are vastly overstated, assumedly for dramatic
effect. It makes for entertaining reading, but it's not a great practical
resource.
Implementing an RSS reader can be a lot of work, but that has more to do
with the realities of parsing malformed feeds than it does with multiple RSS
versions.
Regards
James
I wouldn't worry about malformed feeds either. Rmail never tried to
parse malformed feeds. Whenever a user brought it up, I pointed to
the validators and CCed the publisher. Eventually, I sold Rmail to
NBC. I think the value of parsing malformed feeds is overstated as
well.
Thanks,
Randy
--- In rss-public@yahoogroups.com, "James Holderness" <j4_james@...>
wrote:
>
> Implementing an RSS reader can be a lot of work, but that has more
to do
> with the realities of parsing malformed feeds than it does with
multiple RSS
> versions.
>
> Regards
> James
>
Mark Pilgrim (the author of that article) has created an open source
library for parsing RSS feeds that takes all of the incompatibilities
and other issues into account:
http://www.feedparser.org/
On 23 Feb 2008, at 21:18, rcade wrote:
> --- In rss-public@yahoogroups.com, Geoffrey Sneddon <foolistbar@...>
> wrote:
>> There was discussion in the time leading up to the vote on the 1.0
>> version of the profile about work for the second edition (which was
>> referred to as "1.1") — as far as I can see nothing at all has
>> happened about this (I expect due to time constraints).
>
> I think it would be a mistake to begin a new version of the profile so
> soon. If people think it's a moving target, they'll be less likely to
> implement the suggestions.
I don't think that's true — people are still implementing WCAG 1.0
despite 2.0 getting closer to being to a REC. Also, I think if it's on
a timescale of around a year (which I wouldn't be surprised if it took
to get another version done).
> We've been focusing on helping developers and publishers implement the
> profile, and have had success in that area. Since it was published in
> October, both Six Apart and Wordpress have made changes to pass all
> profile-related checks in the Feed Validator.
Those two probably account for a large amount of the RSS feeds out
there (though, admittedly, uptake of new versions is always a
challenge). I don't think uptake of the profile is an issue.
--
Geoffrey Sneddon
<http://gsnedders.com/>
I've found a RSS publisher whose network of sites extends the item
element with two namespace attributes. I brought it up on the Feed
Validator user's list:
http://tinyurl.com/37hcvy
The validator current issues an interop warning when it finds
namespace attributes on core elements.
I agree that properly namespaced extensions to core elements should
not flag a warning, as a general principle in XML namespacing.
--- In rss-public@yahoogroups.com, "rcade" <cadenhead@...> wrote:
>
> I've found a RSS publisher whose network of sites extends the item
> element with two namespace attributes. I brought it up on the Feed
> Validator user's list:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/37hcvy
>
> The validator current issues an interop warning when it finds
> namespace attributes on core elements.
>
Version 2.3 of VTD-XML (http://vtd-xml.sf.net), the next generation
document-centric XML processing model, is now released. To download
the latest version please visit
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?
group_id=110612&package_....
Below is a list of new features and enhancements in this version.
* VTDException is now introduced as the root class for all other VTD-
XML's exception classes (per suggestion of Max Rahder).
* Transcoding capability is now added for inter-document cut and
paste. You can cut a chuck of bytes in a UTF-8 encoded document and
paste it into a UTF-16 encoded document and the output document is
still well-formed.
* ISO-8859-10, ISO-8859-11, ISO-8859-12, ISO-8859-13, ISO-8859-14
and
ISO-8859-15 support has now been added
* Zero length Text node is now possible.
* Ability to dump in-memory copy of text is added.
* Various code cleanup, enhancement and bug fixes.
Below are some new articles related to VTD-XML
* Index XML documents with VTD-XML http://xml.sys-
con.com/read/453082.htm
* Manipulate XML content the Ximple Way
http://www.devx.com/xml/Article/36379
* VTD-XML: A new vision of XML
http://www.developer.com/xml/article.php/3714051
* VTD-XML: XML Processing for the future
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/vtd-xml_examples.aspx
Hi,
In browsing the Best Practices profile [1], I note that the definition
of language in RSS is a bit stale. In particular, the profile implies
that only ISO 639 codes are valid and the link to RSS 0.91 codes is
slightly stale also.
In fact, the language tags defined by W3C are the same as IETF BCP 47
(currently represented by RFC 4646) and the codes, including the ISO
639 codes, are all included in an IANA maintained subtag registry. I
would like to suggest updating the Best Practices profile and other
documentation to reflect these changes.
[1] http://www.rssboard.org/rss-profile#element-channel-lan
Best Regards,
Addison
Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Yahoo! Inc.
Chair -- W3C Internationalization WG
How about minor changes like recommending that multiple catigories on
one item or channel be kept together?
--- In rss-public@yahoogroups.com, Geoffrey Sneddon <foolistbar@...>
wrote:
>
>
> On 23 Feb 2008, at 21:18, rcade wrote:
>
> > --- In rss-public@yahoogroups.com, Geoffrey Sneddon <foolistbar@>
> > wrote:
> >> There was discussion in the time leading up to the vote on the
1.0
> >> version of the profile about work for the second edition (which
was
> >> referred to as "1.1") — as far as I can see nothing at all has
> >> happened about this (I expect due to time constraints).
> >
> > I think it would be a mistake to begin a new version of the
profile so
> > soon. If people think it's a moving target, they'll be less
likely to
> > implement the suggestions.
>
> I don't think that's true — people are still implementing WCAG 1.0
> despite 2.0 getting closer to being to a REC. Also, I think if it's
on
> a timescale of around a year (which I wouldn't be surprised if it
took
> to get another version done).
>
> > We've been focusing on helping developers and publishers
implement the
> > profile, and have had success in that area. Since it was
published in
> > October, both Six Apart and Wordpress have made changes to pass
all
> > profile-related checks in the Feed Validator.
>
> Those two probably account for a large amount of the RSS feeds out
> there (though, admittedly, uptake of new versions is always a
> challenge). I don't think uptake of the profile is an issue.
>
>
> --
> Geoffrey Sneddon
> <http://gsnedders.com/>
>
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