Dare Obasanjo wrote:
>It seems you are complaining about people using invalid date formats
    No. Your comment is a complete distortion of what I wrote. The
issue is that RSS only provides for one date (pubDate) which is
typically used to indicate an item's "creation date". When an item is
updated, it is typically published with its "creation date" -- not the
date that it was last modified. So, users get entries that appear  to
be "old" even when they are "new." This confuses them. The issue here
has *nothing* to do with data format -- it is a question of semantics,
not syntax.
    I find it somewhat telling that the author of one of the better
RSS aggregators would have trouble understanding this point. This is
clearly an illustration of the problems and confusions that can result
from a format as poorly specified as RSS.

> The main problem with dates in the major RSS specs 
> is that they are optional.
	Optionality is an issue which is completely orthogonal to the
understanding of those dates that *are* present. If the meaning of a
date is ambiguous, it doesn't much matter if it is present or not.

        bob wyman

-----Original Message-----
From: Dare Obasanjo [mailto:dareo@m...] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 2:28 AM
To: bob@w...; Joshua Allen; Michael Champion; XML DEV
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] best practice for providing newsfeeds ?


The main problem with dates in the major RSS specs is that they are
optional. It seems you are complaining about people using  invalid
date formats which have nothing to do with the specs given that both
major flavors of RSS have well-defined descriptions of what valid
dates look like.  

-- 
PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM
Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the Earth, minus 40%
inheritance tax. 



From: Bob Wyman [mailto:bob@w...]
Sent: Mon 2/2/2004 2:24 PM
To: Joshua Allen; 'Michael Champion'; 'XML DEV'
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] best practice for providing newsfeeds ?


Joshua Allen wrote:
>> original creation. (Atom defines both "created" date and "issued"
>> date. This allows the distinction to be made.)
> Great, a techie feature.  My grandmother certainly didn't ask for
that one. 
        Well, other people's grandmothers *did*. Every day I get mail
from someone asking: "Why are you telling me that this entry which is
dated "August-2003" is "New"? How stupid is your code that it can't
read a date!"
        The lack of metadata in RSS confuses users more than it
confuses us.