Ralph -- No dog shootings, but there have been some cat murders in our
neighborhood lately. The authorities are looking at a local ATOM cult as
prime suspects.

Anyway, just to be clear, we have agreed that there must be at least one
mandatory response schema. So if as you propose it's not ATOM, then can we
infer that you are proposing the SRU response schema (some variant of it,
let's call it 'SR') will be mandatory?

Mandatory *support* that is. i.e. there will be a requestedResponseSchema
parameter. If the client says 'SR' the server cannot say "sorry I don't
support the requested response schema". If the client request other than
'SR' and the server doesn't support it, it may use SR, and the client is
expected to support it.

Is that your proposal?

Then if we take that approach, that is, use the current SRU response schema
as the basis for the SR schema, why not make it look as much like ATOM as
possible? Use ATOM element names, etc., add in our elements (those we
need, but are not in ATOM) include the ATOM srange-but-mandatory elements
but make them optional, and all this in one namespace.

--Ray


----- Original Message -----
From: "LeVan,Ralph" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 9:52 AM
Subject: Don't Say NO to Atom Feeds!


For all the lively debate, I don't think we're in violent disagreement.

1) Atom Feeds will NOT be mandatory. Sorry Farrukh, but they aren't
even mandatory in OpenSearch.
2) We will come up with a mechanism for clients to request Atom Feeds as
responses.

The only Atom Feed details to nail down are the mandatories that we
don't like. Here's my heretical proposal: if you don't like an element,
don't use it. Nothing is mandatory. What, are they going to come and
shoot your dog if you omit a mandatory element? If you can find a
useful value to put into a standard Atom element, then do so. If you
are delivering up bibliographic data, then fill in the author element.

As several people have pointed out, there are plenty of other systems
that are non-compliant and we haven't heard of a rash of dog shootings.
We'll join them. As Farrukh has pointed out, the Atom developers are at
work on their standard now. I'm sure that they are aware that it is
being used for more than they intended and I suspect those mandatories
will go away soon. In the meantime, don't obsess about it.

Ralph