Rodent Regatta

...Ben Hammersly posted an entry I’m just now discovering. He does an excellent job of describing the nature of the current n/echo debate and what it might mean for users, the weblog tools companies and developers.

Yesterday, Rogers Cadenhead left me a comment. I appreciate it and I’m flattered. Without ”looking a gift horse in the mouth” I have to say that I just don’t have the prior knowledge required to understand exactly what Rogers is telling me.

I’m reminded of the first time those of us who started engineering school with sliderules saw calculators. We just didn’t know what to do at first.

That’s where I am with Rogers’s comment. I’m going to parse it here, if for no other reason than to expose my ignorance:

• ”adopt the optional core elements of RSS 2.0 that have information you want to deliver” – Where do I find a listing of what the optional core elements of RSS 2.0 are?
• ”add the namespace elements you want to support without removing any core elements” – Where are these listed? How do I do this? Is Rogers really explaining to me how to build my own RSS 2.0-compliant feed? Thus far, I’ve trusted the ”recommended feeds” that are bundled with Movable Type or provided by others. I haven’t really known why or how they worked!
• ”you support the people who have namespace support and those who don’t” – This sounds reader-oriented and friendly. As a writer of weblog I’m trying to do things that make it easy for others to read the weblog in as many different ways as they choose – visit the site, get it in a news reader, etc.

[DISCLAIMER: I have no axe to grind in the political debates about RSS, echo, etc. I don’t want to sound like an ingrate by parsing Rogers’s friendly comment and suggestion. I’m simply exposing the degree of my lack of knowledge in hopes of getting a primer on where to learn more!]