Rodent Regatta

CNET News is reporting that Google has selected Atom as the syndication mechanism for Blogger. I added an Atom feed to this weblog over the weekend. It sits next to the RSS 1.0 and 2.0 feeds in the sidebar.

I’m really not sure what the differences are between these feeds. I can’t tell you why one is considered ”superior” to the others. In fact, I can’t be certain that I know what makes an RSS feed or an Atom feed validate. I have spent no time analyzing the syntax between these three feeds.

There’s also a lot of confusion about how to alter feeds so that you provide an excerpt using Movable Type’s excerpt field or a full post using both the primary text entry box as well as any text entered into the extended entry box. How do you make any of these feeds include or exclude comments?

Sometime before Monday, I hope to spend some time with this article to learn more and begin to develop an ability to edit these feeds myself. It appears to me that there would be a lot of interest in a white paper written in language that non-coders can understand about the various feeds, how to write them and how to alter them.