intertwingly

It’s just data

Again with the relative URLs


Phil Ringnalda: However, the <channel> <link> element is not at all required to be the base URL for relative links.

Phil is right.  The specs are silent on this.  In fact, many people believe that relative links should be resolved relative to the feed itself, not the <channel><link> element's value. 

Spec issues aside, the hope that aggregators can correct ill formed and encoded HTML for you is beyond the reach of most do it yourself'ers, and even many companies.  I hold the hope that the situation would improve if people started placing their content in their feeds in ways that are demonstrably well formed and easier to parse, but then again, I'm being too optimistic.

Sadly, in spring of 2003,  the best practice is still to avoid relative URLs in RSS feeds.