WK2 - A preliminary description upon RSS.

Introduction to RSS

RSS is a family of web feed format used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, new feeds or podcast.

RSS formats are specifying in XML. RSS delivers its information as XML file called an “RSS feed”, “webfeed”, “RSS stream”, or “RSS channel”.

Most of web browsers and Email readers have integrated support for RSS feeds. Some newsreader software such as Mozilla Thunderbird or Forté Agent is handy usefully to aggregate the RSS news.

How does RSS work? Programs known as feed readers can check a list of feeds on behalf of user and display any update article that they find. It’s common to see an orange rectangle or with letter . It lets people to choose to subscribe.

Most Variously used standard today refers to RSS 2.0 (Really simple Syndication), Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0), RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0).

RSS module is to extend the basic XML schema established for more robust syndication of content.

History

However, before RSS, several similar formats existed for syndication, but none achieved widespread popularity as using today. The earliest could be dated back to 1995. Ramanathan V. Guha at Apple Computer’s Advanced Technology Group developed the Meta Content Framework (MCF). Guha left Apple for Netscape and adapted MCF to use XML and create the version Resource Description Framework (RDF). RDF can be referred to the first version of RSS.

In March 1999, RSS 0.9 was named and used in My Netscape portal. So the first browser supported RSS was Netscape.

In 2001, AOL’s acquisition and reconstructing of Netscape, RSS/XML was redesigned.

A working group and mailing list, RSS-DEV was set up by various users. They modified RSS 0.91 and claimed that was the property of his company. RSS‘s specification competition begun.

In Sep 2002, a final successor to RSS 0.92, known as RSS 2.0 released, emphasizing “Really Simple Syndication” as the 3 letter abbreviation.

In Nov 2002, New York Times offered its readers to subscribe to RSS news feeds and drove the RSS format’s becoming a de facto standard.

In Jan 2005, Sean B. Palmer, Christopher Schmidt, and Cody Woodard produced a preliminary draft of RSS 1.1, removing little-used features from 1.0.

In Dec 2005, Microsoft IE team and Outlook team announced in their blogs that they will be adopting the icon - orange square with white radio waves the industry standard and related formats such as Atom which first used in Mozilla Firefox browser .

In Jan 2006, Rogers Cadenhead relaunched the RSS Advisory Board in order to move the RSS format forward.

Incompatibilities between RSS 2.x/1.x

As noted in the history, there are different version of RSS, falling into 2 major branches (RDF and 2.*). The RDF, or RSS 1.x branch includes: RSS 0.90 (originated from Netscape RSS version), RSS 1.0 (by the RSS-DEV Working Group), RSS 1.1(updated and replace 1.0).

The RSS 2.x branch includes the following versions: RSS 0.91 (simplified RSS version by Netscape), RSS 0.92-0.94(expansions of the RSS 0.91 format), RSS 2.0.1 (proclaimed to be “frozen”, stand for Really Simple Syndication).

The latest part, later version in each branch are backward-compatible with earlier versions. Most syndication software supports both branches.

The extension mechanisms make it possible for each branch to track innovations in the other. RSS 2.x is the first one to support enclosures (podcasting). However, this extension is available for the RSS 1.x branch. Likewise, RSS 2.x does not support providing full-text in addition to a synopsis, but RSS 1.x can be used as an extension.

The most serious compatibility problem is with HTML markup. Userland’s RSS reader didn’t filter out HTML markup from feeds which led to the inconsistency in how software handles HTML markup.

Atom - New specification to RSS 1.x/2.x

A third group began a new syndication specification, Atom, in June 2003. It adopted by IETF (see RFC 4287).The relative benefits of Atom compared to the two RSS branches are debating within the Web-syndication community.

Supporters claimed its relying on standard XML features, by specifying a payload container that can handle many different kinds of content without ambiguous, and having a specification maintained by a recognized standard organization.

Critics claim that Atom introduces a third branch of syndication specification, further confusing the marketplace.

Reference:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS
• Python Cookbook 2ed.