Abstract
Adds a new element pub:modified to Atom Entries and spec that collection listings are ordered by pub:modified instead of atom:updated.
Author
Rationale
Being aware of insignificant changes (changes to a resource without modification of the atom:updated value) is necessary for clients with offline mode (they can't do a GET before editing an entry) to limit conflicts (particularly on mono-user systems, and not preventing them all) and enhance the user experience.
This hits the 80/20 mark.
Proposal
In section 9, replace the second paragraph with:The entries in the returned Feed MUST be ordered by their 'pub:modified' property (Section 11.2), with the most recently modified entries coming first in the document order.
Add the following to section 11, renumbering following subsections:
11.2 The pub:modified element
This specification defines a new child element of Atom Entries to carry the instant in time when they were last modified.
pubModified = element pub:modified { atomDateConstruct }
The "pub:modified" element is a Date construct as defined in [AtomFormat].
The "pub:modified" element MAY appear as a child of an "atom:entry" which is being created or updated via the Atom Publishing Protocol. The "pub:modified" element, if it does appear in an entry, MUST only appear at most one time. When listing a collection membership, if the "pub:modified" element does not appear in an entry, implementations MUST treat the entry as if the element were present with a value equal to the one of the "atom:updated" element.
The "pub:modified" element MAY be included in Atom Feed or Entry Documents. The "pub:modified" element is considered "foreign markup" as defined in Section 6 of the Atom Syndication Format.
Impacts
Notes
Discussion on the atom-protocol list here