- From: Edward O'Connor <hober0@gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:43:57 -0700
- To: Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>
- Cc: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, "public-html@w3.org WG" <public-html@w3.org>
Sam wrote: > I think that there is a hidden assumption in there some place, but I'm > not sure. Perhaps something along the lines of "all conforming HTML > pages should be able to produce something resembling an Atom feed > using the algorithm specified in section 5.5.3"[...] I think there is an underlying design principle: Handle Errors[1]. Just as the HTML parsing algorithm generates a DOM from any input, the HTML->Atom conversion algorithm generates an Atom feed from any HTML document (that has <article> elements, see Step 1 of the algoritm[2]). Julian wrote: > Either you store the ID with the item, or you derive the ID from something > sufficiently unique in the set of items, or ... you don't produce an Atom > feed. Sam wrote: > One possible way to address this is for section 5.5.3, step 15, substep 9, > otherwise clause be modified to throw an INVALID_STATE_ERR exception if it > is not possible to generate an entry id in a way that ensures uniqueness. Suppose there's an HTML document with several <article>s, only one of which triggers the "otherwise" clause of step 15, substep 9. Instead of throwing an exception and aborting--not producing any feed at all--why not just leave out that one problematic <atom:entry> from the resulting feed? So instead of "or ... you don't produce an Atom feed," we don't produce an Atom *entry* for that specific <article>. Sam wrote: > I do believe that the following are all true: > > 1) it is the case that some HTML pages can be processed in such a > way as to produce a useful Atom feed. > 2) some people find ability this desirable > 3) entry ids that are not created in a way that ensures uniqueness > not only is technically violated the spec, but are generally > problematic > 4) many who implement the algorithm currently in the spec have no > interest or ability to manage state Agreed on all four counts. Ted 1. http://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#handle-errors 2. http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/converting-html-to-other-formats.html#atom
Received on Thursday, 15 April 2010 16:44:49 UTC