OPML Nitpicking - The RSS Blog

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:39:47 GMT

OPML Nitpicking

Dave Winer has asked the community for some nitpicking on his OPML 2.0 spec. I'm giving it a shot.

Is it possible to make the jump from RFC 822 dates to ISO 8601 or is it too late?
Could you specify which email formats are valid for ownerEmail attribute? 'mailto:randy@kbcafe.com', 'randy@kbcafe.com', 'luksa@dallas.example.com (Frank Luksa)', etc.
The text attribute wasn't required in 1.0, but is in 2.0, which will invalid some feeds which were previously valid.
The category attribute need an example. I think I understand, but there's too much room for misinterpretation.
Could you say that the htmlUrl attribute must be a URL or something like that?
What are the valid values of the language attribute?
Please provide the known value of Atom feed version attributes.
In inclusion, you rely on the file extension .opml when processing an element. I suspect this will prove problematic. Why not use a type='opml' attribute instead.
In extending OPML, you say that extension element AND ATTRIBUTES can only be used if defined in a namespace. In OPML 1.0, you were allowed to add any attributes to outline in the OPML namespace. This will cause some 1.0 feeds to be invalidated by 2.0.
The description attribute in 1.0 often contained HTML markup, but according to this spec, it may no longer contain HTML markup. Could we add a bit of text to specifically allow HTML markup in description.
Requiring auto-disco to use rel='outline' invalidates most existing implementations of OPML autodiscovery. Maybe the value SHOULD BE rel='outline', rather than IS.
Can you add a section on the OPML extension namespace.

http://www.opml.org/spec2

Categories:Â opml