Subject: Re: [Tools-team] draft-ietf-tools-notification-03.txt

From: Bill Fenner <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 20:34:55 -0800

RSS "feeds" usually give the "top headlines"; in this case I'd say
it'd be the most recent events matching the request.  RSS XML is
generally:

<rss>
 <channel>
  <title>This is an event feed for draft-foo-bar</title>
  <link>http://tools.ietf.org/events.cgi?tag=draft-foo-bar</link>
  <description>This lists the most recent 15 events for draft-foo-bar</description>
  <pubDate>Thu, Feb  3 2005 20:23:50 +0800</pubDate>
  <generator>Bill's fingers</generator>
 </channel>
 <item>
  <title>draft-foo-bar submitted to IESG for publication</title>
  <description>A formal request has been made to
      advance/publish the document, following the procedures in Section
      7.5 of [RFC2418].  The request could be from a WG chair, from an
      individual through the RFC Editor, etc.  A document in this state
      has not (yet) been reviewed by an AD nor has any official action
      been taken on it.</description>
  <link>(Event URL)</link>
  <category>http://tools.ietf.org/event-category/IESG-SUBMIT</category>
 </item>
 <item>
  <title>draft-foo-bar working group last call</title>
  ...
 </item>
</rss>

I came up with the following possible mappings:

                                            RSS Tag     RSS Version
-    1.  Document tag
-    2.  Serial number                      <guid>      2.0
-    3.  Document (new) name
-    4.  Document (new) state
-    5.  Date and time                      <pubDate>   2.0
-    6.  Event title                        <title>     0.91
-    7.  Event abstract                     <description> 0.91
-    8.  Event URL                          <link>      0.91
-    9.  Event type                         <category>  0.92

Some of the mappings are a little weak, in particular event type to
<category>.  Of course the mappings to rss2.0 elements might be iffy,
and we should look at reader behavior specifically.

I'm working on a script to turn my event database into events of this
format in order to try them out with various rss readers and see what
we get.  I'll create an intermediate XML format with the 9-tuple
so that we can use XSL to do the atom mapping to do the same experiments
in both formats.

  Bill

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From: stanislav shalunov <[email-masked]>
Date: 04 Feb 2005 00:33:24 -0500

Bill Fenner <[email-masked]> writes:

> generally: [...]

Bill,

Thank you.  This is great.  One note: I was assuming that the RSS file
for a given tag would contain all events related to that tag, rather
than last N.

Does <category> have to be a valid URL or can we get away with an
opaque character string, e.g., "IESG-SUBMIT"?

Is guid supposed to be globally unique (like email message-id) or
unique only within the feed?  (In the former case, adding the document
tag would help.)

Thanks again,                                   --Stas

-- 
Stanislav Shalunov		http://www.internet2.edu/~shalunov/

Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.    -- Leonard Brandwein

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From: Bill Fenner <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 21:50:13 -0800

>opaque character string, e.g., "IESG-SUBMIT"?

I goofed in my example; I meant it to be

<category domain="http://tools.ietf.org/events/">IESG-SUBMIT</category>

in which it's more clear that the URL portion is a tag, not a URL per se.

>Is guid supposed to be globally unique (like email message-id)

Yes - I was thinking a URL (again, not necessarily pointing to anything,
just using the URL form) including ietf.org, document tag and event ID.

  Bill

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From: Bill Fenner <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 11:56:44 -0800

>One note: I was assuming that the RSS file

This is possible - we may have to see how readers handle lots of entries.
RSS 0.91 was limited to 15 <item>s per <channel>, but 0.92 and 2.0 have
no such limitation.

Also, following on to our discussion about XML name spaces: RSS 2.0
formally permits elements in other namespaces; again basically
formalizing existing practice.

  Bill

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From: stanislav shalunov <[email-masked]>
Date: 04 Feb 2005 15:16:43 -0500

> This is possible - we may have to see how readers handle lots of entries.

For a typical draft, the number of entries shouldn't be too large
(equal to the number of versions before publication request, plus a
dozen more).  At least some RSS readers should allow to only see
previously unseen events.

What are the most widespread RSS readers in use?

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by
those who have not got it."			-- G. B. Shaw