This is a milestone: the IETF Atompub Working Group thinks we’re mostly finished with the Atom Syndication Format, and our Area Director has put the draft out for last call IETF-wide. It’s not set in stone, the WG is chewing on a couple of last little change proposals that might get consensus, and it’s quite likely that some of the smart IETFers will spot problems and ask for changes. We think Atom does a reasonably good job of coalescing all the years of experience with all the RSSes, and I’m pretty convinced it will make a difference. We’ve tried to err on the side of omission; there are lots of things that could have been added that weren’t. We only felt confident enough cover the areas where there’s a lot of prior art and the arguments are mostly over. Anyhow, Atom’s extensible; I’m pretty sure the market is creative enough to converge on good extensions to address any important things we left out. So please have a look either at the IETF ASCII or nice modern HTML versions of the draft, and see if you think we’ve missed anything.
