Categories
Specs

RSS and disappointment

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I am disappointed.

I am disappointed that the work I did yesterday to show that RDF can work well within a simplified RSS environment is for naught because assumptions have already been made, decisions sealed. Jon Udell writes, paraphrasing Sam Ruby, Assuming that the RSS core is now frozen…. Why is there an assumption that the core is frozen? Why is there an assumption that Userland owns RSS 2.0? Because Dave Winer says so? Because a few – a very few– other people say so?

What of the community, who must continue to be faced with issues of two different RSS specifications; who will have to face the difficulties inherent with this again in the future?

I’m disappointed because assumptions have been made that the efforts of the RSS 1.0 working group and Userland can never merge. The result of this assumption is that those who wish to write or read RSS in the future must bear the burden of both groups lack of cooperation.

I am disappointed because we were starting to see such good questions from the user community — questions such as those that appeared in the comments attached to my postings. Questions that allow us to define why some of these issues are important to many of us. Questions and comments that serve to make technologists take a good hard look at what we arrogantly decide is ‘good’ for the community.

Both RSS groups have been working far too long in a vacuum, and this week the lid got popped and fresh air came in. And I have never seen groups, normally so diametrically opposed, work together so well as these two did this week, trying to put that lid back on as quickly as possible.

I am disappointed that the RDF working group didn’t join the debate and benefit from such an open discourse with the user community, in addition to taking this opportunity to clarify much of the confusion and complexity about RDF. However, the debate was so short, the working group may not even be aware that it happened.

 

 

 

Categories
Weblogging

Note from Management

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I get private email communications all the time based on my postings, and most are great.

Sometimes people will write because I have made a typo or a grammatical error, and I really appreciate this. I prefer not to make these kinds of mistakes, but can get excited when I write and not notice the problem at first. These kinds of emails are very helpful.

Sometimes people will send gentle notes to let me know I’ve gone over the edge, I’ve lost my perspective, or I’ve been unnecessarily rough. Again, I appreciate this. I am nothing if not a passionate person, but I genuinely don’t want to be mean or cruel, or pedantic or tiresome. Only a friend would take the time to let me know that I’m heading in a direction they know I’ll regret at some point.

Sometimes people will want to agree or disagree with that I write and want to chat offline. Well, I consider this a treat. I am a richer person by hearing your views, and being allowed to discuss mine. Most sincere thanks for this gift of time you give me.

However, there are times when I get people who want to say hurtful, vicious, demeaning, and abusive things offline. By doing so, they can dump on me but still maintain a persona of sweetness and light with the world. This passive aggressive technique is, to me, about one of the most dispicable things a person can do.

When people (a very few people) indulge in these sorts of emails, it leaves me tired, hurt, and very touchy. Then I react online and the rest of my readers haven’t a clue why I’m so cranky, or why I’m reacting so strongly to certain events. Or worse; they wonder why am I lashing out at such as generous and kind hearted person.

I don’t like getting emails that tell me that I’m sick, I’m sad, no wonder I’m single because I’m such a bitch and nobody would have me, I’m a loser, I have no life, or today’s particular treasure which stated that I blamed this person for all the problems in my life, and that this was pathetic.

Say what? No offense to any of you, but none of you have that kind of power over me. But these kind of emails wear me down.

So, here’s my new plan. I’ve replied to the sender of the recent email the following:

No more. If you want to talk with me, do it in public. No more of these personal attacks in my email. If you’re so proud of what you have to say to me, say it in public.

I have received abuse from this person for months. Next time I get an email from this same source, it goes online. And this person is more than welcome to print anything I say privately online if they wish. I am not ashamed of what I write.

There is a difference between disagreeing with a person and abusing them. And I’m tired of being abused.

Thanks for your time. End of management memo.

Categories
Specs

RSS Summary

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Folks, to all intents and purposes both RSS groups are continuing along on their separate paths. Whether the RSS 1.0 group continues using RDF in their specification is an open question, which I hope they will resolve as this indecision leaves confusion in its wake.

I think the community loses by this divergence, but I have done all that I can to try and influence this and haven’t been successful. I will continue to answer questions about my interpretation of any of this, but won’t continue my direct efforts in this regard, not because I’m angry and am picking up my marbles and going home, but because I am going to need to focus my time on those things I can influence, such as making a living.

I did appreciate those questions about the use of RDF within the simplified RDF RSS 2.0 specification. Those were a treat, and I thank you. Please feel free to continue asking questions, privately, via email.

On to other things.

Categories
Weblogging

Touch not the weblogger

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Words have power. A word said in one context is just a word, but in another context lights the fuse to a bomb.

“word”

KA-BOOM!

(Crispy fragments of confused wonderment)

Power words are given their power through worry, fear, anger, insecurity, sadness, or hurt. Especially hurt. Nothing gives a power word more energy, more kick, more bang per syllable, than hurt.

Unfortunately, there are different power words for each of us, and pity the poor person who says the word or words in the right context and releases a veritable torrent of reaction.

What’s difficult for the unwary is the circumstances surrounding our acquisition of a new power word are such that we don’t particularly care to share them with the world at large. So some poor sod can be walking happily along and between one sentence fragment and the next, the ground quickens beneath his or her feet, and “SLURP!” — they’re sucked into the vortex of power word wipeout. It’s not a pretty sight.

Luckily, wipeouts leave visible marks that trace around the power word, forming chalk outlines on the psyche, warning signs to touch not the weblogger.

Not that I have any words. Not me.

Categories
Semantics Technology

RSS: Proof is in the implementation

Sam Ruby had taken a first shot at RSS 2.0 with an RSS document demonstrating the new, simplified RSS syntax. No evidence of RDF, RSS version, no RDF Seq.

Mark expanded on this with what looks to be the same specification, different examples and the use of included HTML (parseLiteral in RDF terms). (Correct me if I misread this Mark).

Since Sam has published an example of his version, allow me to work with the assumption that whatever works with his proposed RSS 2.0 should work with Mark’s, with the addition of HTML literals.

In this weblog page, I have PHP processing for the Book recommendation list. I copied the page and modified it to process Sam’s new proposed RSS file. You can see it in action here. The process took me about 10 minutes because the SHIFT key on my laptop doesn’t work well, and I am using vi to make the edits.

Now, I want to show you something. Here is my MT generated RDF/RSS file. Taking this and Sam’s and Mark’s proposed RSS 2.0, I came up with a simplified RDF/RSS syntax, seen in this file and also duplicated here:

<?xml version=”1.0″?>

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf=”http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#” xmlns:dc=”http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/” xmlns=”http://purl.org/rss/1.0/”>

<channel rdf:about=”http://weblog.burningbird.net/”>
<title>Burningbird</title>
<link>http://weblog.burningbird.net/</link>
<description></description>

<item>
<rdf:Description rdf:about=”http://weblog.burningbird.net/archives/000514.php”>
<link>http://weblog.burningbird.net/archives/000514.php</link>
<title>Myths about RDF/RSS</title>
<description>Lots of discussion about the direction that RSS is going to take, which I think is good. However, the first thing that
happens any time a conversation about RSS occurs is people start questioning the use of RDF within the…</description>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:creator>shelley</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2002-09-06T00:53:16-06:00</dc:date>
</rdf:Description>
</item>

<item>
<rdf:Description rdf:about=”http;//weblog.burningbird.net/archives/000515.php”>
<link>http://weblog.burningbird.net/archives/000515.php</link>
<title>ThreadNeedle Status</title>
<description>I provided a status on ThreadNeedle at the QuickTopic discussion group. I wish I had toys for you to play with, but no
such luck. To those who were counting on this technology, my apologies for not having it for…</description>
<dc:subject>Technology</dc:subject>
<dc:creator>shelley</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2002-09-06T00:19:28-06:00</dc:date>
</rdf:Description>
</item>

</channel>

</rdf:RDF>

Differences are:

 

  1. RDF element rather than RSS
  2. No versioning – not necessary with the concept of namespaces
  3. Use of namespaces to differentiate modules
  4. Surrounding the ITEM’s properties with a RDF:Description. The ITEM can have either literal data or XML elements that should be parsed. By using RDF:Description, I’m giving a hint to the processors that what follows is XML data to be parsed for new elements, so turn off literal text processing optimization, and use the more memory and CPU intensive XML parser, please.

Notice that there is no RDF:Seq in this RDF/RSS version. Why? You don’t have to use the Seq element for valid RDF. I believe Seq was used with RSS 1.0 because the originators of RSS 1.0 wanted to provide ordering information to the tool builders. However, this really seems to be an absolute sticking point with everyone. Fine. Dump it.

Run my new RDF/RSS through the RDF validator (here), and you’ll see it’s valid RDF.

Now, I created a third copy of my weblog page with the PHP processing and had it parse and print out this new RSS file. The changes necessary? I changed DC:DATE to DC:CREATOR — I wanted to print out the latter not the former. Here’s the new page.

Next, I copied the PHP page and had the code process my original RDF/RSS 1.0 file, the one that’s generated automatically from MovableType. Changes to the code? Nada. Not one single change other than the name of the RDF file. Time to make change? 4 seconds. See the new page here.

Now, all of these pages (including this one) use PHP-based XML processing to process the data (xml_parser). No specialized RSS or RDF APIs. Pure XML processing. And it took me about, well, honestly, probably a couple of hours to write the original code for my Books RDF/RSS application. That darn shift key you know.

I’m not trying to downplay other’s concerns or existing work or effort, and I realize that I have a better understanding of RDF than most of you (not bragging, but give me this as an accepted for discussion purposes at this moment) and that this gives me an edge when working with RDF.

What I’m trying to show is that keeping RDF in the RSS specification doesn’t nececssarily mean that simplified processing is impossible, or that we can’t use ‘regular’ XML tools, and that there will be a huge burden on tool writers.

We don’t have to keep Seq if it really bothers everyone. Let’s work this change. Let’s. Let us work this change. I like that phrase, don’t you?

By keeping RDF in RSS now — and really are those changes I made to the proposed RSS 2.0 so hard to swallow? — we keep the door open for the benefits that will be accured some day when RDF does have broader use.

I guess what I’m trying to show, demonstrate, prove is that RDF doesn’t have to make things arbitrarily complicated, or confusing. That we can write documentation that clarifies those few bits of RDF in the specification so that it isn’t complicated for folks writing or reading this stuff by hand (or processing it with various languages).

I’m hoping with this demonstration that I’ll convince a few of you that we can keep the door open on this discussion rather than arbitrarily throwing RDF out — a specification I’d like to gently remind you all that’s been in work for years by some of the best markup minds in the business. And as easy as it is to criticize the RDF working group for taking time, remember that they’re trying to create a specification that will stand the test of of time, rather than break through every version, as we had with HTML.

Mark provided a summary of the RSS issue, and I know that this discussion has been going on for years. And I know that there are a lot of people who say, let’s just fork. But folks, this didn’t work for SQL and QUEL (remember QUEL?) years ago when the decision was being made about which query format to use when accessing relational database data. I really do want to see these specs come together, with members and players from all sides.

And I’ll also be honest and say that I really don’t want to see this owned by any private company or person. Sorry, but I just can’t accept this, it goes everything I believe in. I am not belittling Dave’s and Userland’s contribution to RSS. I realize that Userland popularized RSS and a debt is owed.

What I am asking is that Dave become part of a team working on this, a team that’s open to people who literally have something to contribute on this issue, each with an equal vote. Yes, people like me, like Mark, like Sam, Jon, Joe, Bill — all the people who have something to contribute to make this specification rock. And hopefully prevent something like this from happening again in the future.

Am I too late though? Is the decision made? Can’t we talk?

Where’s the fire?

(Archived page and comments at Wayback Machine)