Where's the Feed?
As usual, Mark is taking cuts at Web services. This time, he dredges up a two year old email to make a point, but then fails to do so. Sorry, Mark... nice try.
He claims:
Gee, what's this in my News Aggregator? Huh, I have an RSS feed from the W3C that syndicates status changes for W3C specs and other key events. Ohmigod! Does that mean that there's something horribly, horribly wrong at the W3C?
And gee... the list of specs here seems to be much longer than the list here that he claims is hysterical. Or, for that matter, the list here.
(aside: When is the IETF going to pull its collective head out of the 1980s and publish an RSS feed for its activity? For that matter, you'd think that it could at least publish an index with links to the specs!)
But let's dig a bit deeper. RFC2616 has 39 references (give or take a couple) to other IETF RFCs plus a couple more references to ISO and ANSI character set specifications. Hard to tell which are normative or not. Hmmm... And of course, it doesn't stop there. There are about a dozen or more additional specs that you really need beyond RFC2616 to do anything meaningful at all (such as those related to security and clarifications about limitations with proxy caching, etc). Oh, and what about all those pesky media type specifications for the things that are transferred about over RFC2616. If you're a browser developer, you'd probably want a heads up on any changes to those. Maybe an RSS Feed wouldn't be such a bad idea. Or would that mean that there was something horribly, horribly wrong with the Web?
Please don't misunderstand my intent, I like HTTP. Unlike Mark, neither do I think it is the last protocol we'll ever need (it is not), nor do I spend every waking moment trying to tear it down or to poke fun at things that it simply doesn't handle effectively. That would be pointless.
He claims:
anytime you need an RSS feed to track new specs, something is, prima facie, horribly, horribly, wrong.Really? I would have thought that an RSS Feed for a project, no matter how large or small would be a good thing(tm).
Gee, what's this in my News Aggregator? Huh, I have an RSS feed from the W3C that syndicates status changes for W3C specs and other key events. Ohmigod! Does that mean that there's something horribly, horribly wrong at the W3C?
And gee... the list of specs here seems to be much longer than the list here that he claims is hysterical. Or, for that matter, the list here.
(aside: When is the IETF going to pull its collective head out of the 1980s and publish an RSS feed for its activity? For that matter, you'd think that it could at least publish an index with links to the specs!)
But let's dig a bit deeper. RFC2616 has 39 references (give or take a couple) to other IETF RFCs plus a couple more references to ISO and ANSI character set specifications. Hard to tell which are normative or not. Hmmm... And of course, it doesn't stop there. There are about a dozen or more additional specs that you really need beyond RFC2616 to do anything meaningful at all (such as those related to security and clarifications about limitations with proxy caching, etc). Oh, and what about all those pesky media type specifications for the things that are transferred about over RFC2616. If you're a browser developer, you'd probably want a heads up on any changes to those. Maybe an RSS Feed wouldn't be such a bad idea. Or would that mean that there was something horribly, horribly wrong with the Web?
Please don't misunderstand my intent, I like HTTP. Unlike Mark, neither do I think it is the last protocol we'll ever need (it is not), nor do I spend every waking moment trying to tear it down or to poke fun at things that it simply doesn't handle effectively. That would be pointless.
posted by Chris at
Friday, April 23, 2004
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