Hugh Winkler holding forth on computing and the Web

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Using Atom to manage lists of Atom feeds

As Phil Wilson does, I have come to rely on Planet Intertwingly as a substitute, largely, for maintaining my own list of interesting feeds. But now Phil wants to filter Sam's picks; he wants to select favorites from the PI OPML.

That raises the interesting prospect that we now need Atom feeds for OPML updates. When Sam adds a new feed, I would want to check it out. Since OPML content is, by definition, a list, I guess Sam could mark up the feed with Simple List Extensions. I'm temporarily suspending my suspicion of SLE, because PI's growing and shrinking list of feeds is clearly unlike an ordinary, infinitely growing feed.

Using Atom to manage lists of Atom feeds demonstrates that Atom captures a powerful abstraction.

1 comment:

Phil Wilson said...

The PI OPML file is a list, but an unordered one so I'd suggest that SLE isn't appropriate.

An Atom feed which represents feed subscription as a new entry would be valuable, however; especially if it could include some sort of "subscribe to the site this entry represents" in the content.