Yet Another RSS History: "
[You don’t expect me to work out the CSS right after making
it semantic, do you?]
Shift to another universe. It’s sometime in the late 1990’s.
Ramanathan Guha, Tim Bray, Dave Winer, Tantek Çelik, Dan Libby and Dan Connolly are sharing a
jacuzzi*. As they sip Marghueritas, their conversation goes like
this:
-
DanL
So, we’ve got this idea for publishing content that’s a bit like
CDF, but
we’ve made the system more of a service than just a desktop
thing.
-
Guha
Sounds cool. Might be a good fit with this RDF thing I’ve been
working on.
-
Dave
Hmm, Dan’s stuff does sound cool, but with all due respect dude,
RDF does seem a bit complicated. I really don’t think the folks out
in userland would get it. And they majored in graphs.
-
Tim
Maybe we could make it a bit more straightforward, you know,
like put pointy brackets around it?
-
Dave
Straightforward’s good. Better still, simple. They like
simple.
-
Tantek
But what about the rest of the Web, you know, like HTML?
-
DanL
Hmm, but how do we do the timestamping kind of thing, and wrap
it up in a ‘microposty’ way, the things that makes this
distribution mode work?
-
Guha
Yeah, metadata is cool. Keep the metadata.
-
Tim
Not cheap though. The Web must be cheap. Did Andreesen show you
his pictures..?
-
Dave
…’Microposty’? you mean like my newsletter thing, but on the
Web?
-
DanL
Yep, like Cool Diary Entry of the Day
-
Tim
But do we really need 1000 pages of spec for that?
-
Tantek
…Incidentally, did you see my Box Model
Hack?
-
Guha
Yup.
-
DanL
Yup.
-
Tim
Yup.
-
Dave
Yup. I explained that on DaveNet last year.
-
MarcC
Hey! I’ve got it: ‘MyDigitalCocktail’..?
-
DanC
Hang on, that gives me
an idea…
There was a tangible outcome to this conversation: a
document format which supports content and unambiguous, explicit,
data and metadata, timestamping and much, much more. It’s viewable
in a regular browser. Can be syndicated; can be aggregated. Unlike
forgetful RSS, archives are almost always retrievable using regular
HTTP methods. In this universe there was no RSS. No syndication
wars. No talking-at-cross-purposes conflict between docheads and
dataheads, syntax fans and model fans. No-one had to publish simple
data in Byzantine RDF/XML. No-one had to deal with doubly-escaped
content and silent data loss. There was no need for any new format
for business cards, calendars, blogs, link lists, reviews, pet
profiles. XHTML with CSS was more than enough. DanL got the
MyNetscape he wanted. Tim got the simple, tight format he wanted.
Guha got the AI. Tantek got to do presentations in a cool black
raincoat. DanC finally got his schedule on his Palm Pilot. Dave got
the credit. MarcC got the parasols and a grass skirt none of the
others would admit to having brought.
Shift back to this universe. Check out hAtom. It’s not finished
yet, but David’s been
methodically working through the (utterly sound) microformats process.
Looks good to me.
* apologies for the imagery, but how else do think Silicon
Valley might seem to someone raised in the cowpat-coated hills of
Derbyshire?
PS. Apologies to everyone mentioned. And before you suggest it,
blogging *is* therapy.
"
(Via Raw.)