Abstract
Add a date which indicates when the entry was originally published
Status
Open.
Supporters
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MarkPilgrim (expressed support when the element was mandatory)
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RobertSayre (expressed support when the element was mandatory)
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BobWyman (expressed support when the element was mandatory)
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DareObasanjo (expressed support when the element was mandatory)
Rationale
The following were primary factors considered in the production of this proposal:
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Tim Bray:
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What the Echo-that-was project should be about is picking the stuff that's already been proven to work and be interoperable, and writing it down in a clean, clear way,
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As an aggregator author, the screwed up nature of identifiers is one of my biggest problems with RSS. In fact, that and the optionality of a date field.
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<pubDate> is an optional sub-element of <item>. Its value is a date, indicating when the item will become available.
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<pubDate> is an optional sub-element of <item>. Its value is a date, indicating when the item was published. If it's a date in the future, aggregators may choose to not display the item until that date.
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Identifier: Date
Definition: A date associated with an event in the life cycle of the resource.
Comment: Typically, Date will be associated with the creation or availability of the resource.
Proposal
Add a section, near section 5.6 for an "atom:published" Element:
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The "atom:published" element's content conveys a date associated with an event early in the life cycle of the entry. Typically, atom:published will be associated with the initial creation or first availability of the resource.
atom:entry elements MAY contain an atom:published element, but MUST NOT contain more than one. The content of this element MUST conform to the Date and Time format defined in RFC 3339.
Consumers MAY chose to sort based on this value. Consumers MAY chose not to display entries containing atom:date elements until the date specified.
Impacts
Publishers will need to provide an additional date.
Notes
RFC 3339 section 5.6 contains the following which we should consider limiting, for purposes of interoperability:
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This date/time format may be used in some environments or contexts that distinguish between the upper- and lower-case letters 'A'-'Z' and 'a'-'z' (e.g. XML). Specifications that use this format in such environments MAY further limit the date/time syntax so that the letters 'T' and 'Z' used in the date/time syntax must always be upper case. Applications that generate this format SHOULD use upper case letters.
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NOTE: ISO 8601 defines date and time separated by "T". Applications using this syntax may choose, for the sake of readability, to specify a full-date and full-time separated by (say) a space character.