Abstract
Allow publishers to indicate when they have no alternate link for a feed.
Author: BillDehora
Status
Open
Incept: 2005-05-09
Written against: draft-08
Rationale
Not all publishers have a suitable alternate link for a feed. Example cases include subversion repositories, mail archives.
Proposal
In section 4.1.1 change the tenth bullet point
o atom:feed elements MUST contain at least one atom:link element with a relation of "alternate".
to
o atom:feed elements MUST contain either and cannot contain both - one or more atom:link elements with a relation of "alternate". - one and only one atom:link element with a relation of "no-alternate".
Impacts
-
PaceFeedIdOrAlternate: none, that pace is withdrawn.
-
PaceFeedIdOrSelf: that pace requires pointing to self in the absence of an atom:id. This pace suggests allowing the publisher to state there is no alternate.
Notes
fragment example derived from 1.1 example 2 in draft-08
<feed xmlns="http://purl.org/atom/ns#draft-ietf-atompub-format-08"> <title type="text">dive into mark</title> <subtitle type="html"> A <em>lot</em> of effort went into making this effortless </subtitle> <updated>2005-04-02T12:29:29Z</updated> <id>tag:example.org,2003:3</id> <link rel="no-alternate" /> <copyright>Copyright (c) 2003, Mark Pilgrim</copyright>
-
The author is not attached to the token 'no-alternate'. Any other token is fine once we agree that it states the publisher is saying there is no alternate link for this feed.
-
The author is fine with a SHOULD provide rather than MUST provide.
-
Whether atom:feed/atom:id MUST be present in the absence of an alternate be present can be argued about separately from whether there is no alternate. see PaceFeedIdOrSelf.