[Web4lib] Use of varying feed/alert protocols

[Michael McCulley]

Good luck on the quest, Leslie.. as you'll likely hear, there's really no
good reason at present
to have to choose either RSS or Atom; for your users, given your resources,
you probably
would wish to implement both automagically.

The site noted below comes from the Atom-side of the fence (linked from here
<http://atomenabled.org/>, for example), but it's an interesting discussion
of the RSS and Atom worlds for feeds; I thought it might be helpful to you
in your decision.

Comparing RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0
http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/Rss20AndAtom10Compared
"People who generate syndication feeds have a choice of feed formats. As of
mid-2005, the two most likely candidates will be RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0. The
purpose of this page is to summarize, as clearly and simply as possible, the
differences between the RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 syndication languages."

Do let us know what you decide to do there at UVa.

Best,
DrWeb

-- 
P. Michael McCulley aka DrWeb
mailto:drweb at san.rr.com
San Diego, CA 
http://drweb.typepad.com/

Quote of the Moment:
 bleakness ... desolation ... plastic forks ...
Monday, November 28, 2005 6:05:42 PM 
 
>-----Original Message-----
>From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org 
>[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Leslie Johnston
>Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 1:04 PM
>To: web4lib at webjunction.org
>Subject: [Web4lib] Use of varying feed/alert protocols
>
>All,
>
>We're starting our exploration of setting up a new content alert 
>service for our Digital Library Repository.  The question isn't 
>whether to do so, but using which protocol(s)?
>
>The history of the development is interesting.  Check out the 
>"History' and "Incompatibilities" sections of the wikipedia page 
>dealing with the different:
>
>         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss and 
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_%28standard%29
>
>We'll be generating our feed content in a home-grown programmatic way 
>from already existing metadata in XML form, using XSLT.  We're not 
>looking for tools, nor are we constrained by any.
>
>I came across this interesting page showing a rough distribution of 
>RSS versus Atom:
>
>         http://www.syndic8.com/stats.php?Section=feeds#FeedLang
>
>Trying to get a handle on what various aggregator tools support is 
>challenging, because of the sheer number of tools:
>
>         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_aggregators
>
>So, a little informal research seems in order.  I'd like to hear from 
>those of you who provide feeds/alerts -- do you provide RSS (which 
>version[s]), Atom, or both?
>
>Thanks in advance,
>Leslie
>
>------------
>Leslie Johnston
>Head, Digital Access Services
>University of Virginia Library
>http://lib.virginia.edu/digital/
>http://lib.virginia.edu/digital/das/
>johnston at virginia.edu