Writing Online

More Wood for the Fire

This comment is not productive, and, since I don't care to find the documents backing my memory, may be wrong.

In 2001, the UserLand RSS version was 0.92, and all elements of item were made optional. Specifically, title and link became optional. This is the version of RSS that I became acquainted with from using Radio. The earliest sample I have is this one from April, 2002.

On March 12, 2002, the Radio application was enhanced to allow users to specify a title and a link for each item. Prior to that enhancement, users could specify only the description (and category); everything else was programmatically generated.

The link element that users specified was not necessarily the same as the URI for the HTML rendering of the item. It could be any URI, though in practice it was either the URI of the item's rendering, or of some thing referenced by the text in the description.

Radio stuffed this user-specified link into the RSS link element, and the title into the RSS title element. In rendering the HTML version, the title was styled, and the link added. Here is a sample 0.92 file from June, 2002. Some items have no title, while others do. Each item has a link.

This change to Radio caused a problem. Before, the aggregator could assume that the link element referred to the HTML version, and could act in a particular fashion based on that assumption. Making the link element user-editable invalidated this assumption.

This could be resolved in two ways. First, Radio could use the specified link only in the HTML rendering, while using the HTML URI in the RSS link element. Alternately, realizing the need for a means of identifying the item itself, the RSS specification could be revised.

The second option was chosen. This additional element is the guid.

3:45:46 PM # Google It!
categories: Writing Online