the iCite net > news / blog > a permalink

news and thoughts on and around the development of the iCite net
by Jay Fienberg

Maybe RSS autodiscovery link usage should change (in Echo?)

posted: Jun 27, 2003 3:39:48 PM

I have been commenting for a while that I think that RSS item data needs to come with permalinks to itself, since most RSS is offered only temporarily through a feed with the most recent 10-25 posts.

With the Echo Project, I even suggested this kind of permalink be added to Echo-RSS itself. But, I also realized today this could be done consistently and conveniently without changing the RSS spec, if a slight change of practice could be made in the usage of the RSS autodiscovery links, which look like:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://icite.net/blog/?flavor=rss" />

The way these links are commonly used is to point to a RSS feed showing the most recent 10-25 items. Using a blog as an example, it makes sense that the "alternate" representation of a blog home page is a RSS feed showing the same 10-25 posts on the blog home page.

But, on a blog post permalink page, it doesn't make as much sense to indicate that the "alternate" view of that page is the 10-25 items on the blog home page. I am thinking that an "alternate" link on a webpage shouldn't be used to mean something other than an alternate view of that page.

So, my proposal is that, on permalink webpages, the RSS autodiscovery link be used consistently to indicate the "alternate" view of that page. For example, on the permalink page for this post, instead of using the same link I show above (which is for the RSS view of what is on my blog home page), I would use:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://icite.net/blog/200306/ rss_autodiscovery.html?flavor=rss&smm=y" />

This link is to the RSS version of this post, and it is itself a permalink and it contains the complete post in the RSS.

Because many or most blog tools could have permalinked RSS, this should be easy to implement at the blog template level. I know the blojsom engine I use to run this blog easily can do this, as I already have RSS permalinks that appear at the bottom of each post on its permalink webpage. So, blojsom can easily also produce the link tags I described.

For me personally, and with what I am doing with the iCite net presently, I see each RSS version of a post as a little database that can be queried and mined. I don't see RSS syndication and aggregation only happening in the scope of recent posts. Rather, I see it happening across all kinds of scopes including aggregation by topic, identity, profile, etc.

Having permalink access to structured data is, to me, practically just as good as having that data in a database ;-) In fact, because of the Internet, I think it is even better. That is one way to think about what the iCite net is looking to encompass.

So, what do you think about this RSS autodiscovery link usage change? If this seems like a good idea, write this up on your blog and spread the word. What should we do next to help link tags like this get commonly used?

Note: for more good information on RSS autodiscovery see Mark Pilgrim's Ultra-liberal RSS locator, which also links to additional posts with more background on the usage of the link tag.

permalink | comments {21} · trackbacks {2}

also available as: rss · rss2 · rdf · atom

Comments and Tracbacks

Comment by: Joe Shelby · http://www.celticdistrict.com/joe.html
posted: Jun 27, 2003 4:34:14 PM

Question : Why is the mime-type "application/rss+xml" instead of "text/rss+xml"? I always thought that application usually meant binary data; XML is text, and should be typed as such so that a browser that doesn't have a handler for it at least has a fallback of displaying it (where the option to save is still there).

Comment by: Jay Fienberg · http://icite.net/blog/
posted: Jun 27, 2003 7:14:25 PM

I don't know the answer. One guess is that this mime type grew out of the one for CDF, the RSS predecessor, which has the mime-type of application/x-cdf. Personally, I also relate to and treat RSS like text/xml, and so I agree with you.

Comment by: Mark · http://diveintomark.org/
posted: Jul 16, 2003 10:34:12 PM

No, application does not mean binary data. For examle, the MIME type for XHTML 1.1 (and presumably 2.0) is application/xhtml+xml. There is a (now-expired) Internet Draft proposing to register the MIME type application/rss+xml. Despite being expired, it was the best idea anyone had, and it fits with the way MIME types are constructed for other formats.

Comment by: Mark · http://diveintomark.org/
posted: Jul 16, 2003 10:37:54 PM

Also, your idea for per-page RSS feeds is sound. Some people already do this; Phil Ringnalda and Sam Ruby both have individual feeds for a post that track the comments and trackbacks on that post, and each individual entry page points to that entry's RSS feed. However, even in this case, I still think that individual entry pages should have a link to the main RSS feed. Many people have "auto-subscribe" bookmarklets that look for the RSS feed by parsing the tags on the current page. If they come in to an entry via a link from another site and say "hey this site is interesting", they can just hit their bookmarklet and subscribe to the site's main feed.

Comment by: Stanley ·
posted: Jun 28, 2005 5:55:24 PM

I am newer in the Internet World and have a little idea of RSS. Please tell me what is RSS Autodiscovery?

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trackback from: the iCite net development blog
posted: Jul 17, 2003 3:16:29 AM
title: Mark Pilgrim comments on my RSS/Echo/Atom autodiscovery post

Mark Pilgrim just commented. . .What follows is an excerpt from an email I sent Mark trying to clarify my main concern / use suggestion, and asking for his feedback:

trackback from: the iCite net development blog
posted: Sep 14, 2003 11:12:09 PM
title: Autodiscovery: spider food, interactive query, processing instruction?

Jeremy Zawodny has jump-started the discussion about RSS feed autodiscovery by proposing what he calls RSS Auto-Discovery 2.0

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