Atom feed for slug + comments?

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

Am I correct in understanding that these are the only
standard Atom feed provided?

1. Page/slugs (<site>/atom/<pagenum>)
2. All comments (<site>/atom/comments)
3. A single entry (<site>/<slug>/atom)
4. A single entry's comments (<site>/<slug>/atom/comments)

There's no feed for 'this entry *and* its comments' ?
--
Ken Coar
OSS developer, opinionist, author, and sanagendamgagwedweinini

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

[Ali B.]

Hi Ken,

There is no feed for an entry and its comments combined as far as I know. The way habari works, I think it's rather safe to say that this particular thing is easily achieved with a plugin though (Speculation only).

Is it a common "type" of feed?

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--
Ali B.
http://awhitebox.com

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

On 5/27/2010 7:31 PM, Ali B. wrote:
>
> There is no feed for an entry and its comments combined as far as I
> know. The way habari works, I think it's rather safe to say that this
> particular thing is easily achieved with a plugin though (Speculation only).

Um.

> Is it a common "type" of feed?

I believe so. Consider:

> 1. Page/slugs (<site>/atom/<pagenum>)
> 2. All comments (<site>/atom/comments)
> 3. A single entry (<site>/<slug>/atom)
> 4. A single entry's comments (<site>/<slug>/atom/comments)

By themselves, #2, #3, and #4 are mostly (IMHO) useless:

2. What's the point of all comments if you can't see what
they're commenting on?
3. A feed for a single entry is, um, not going to change
much. Pretty static.
4. Same as #2, only for a particular entry.

When I want to check canonical behaviour, I look at Sam Ruby's
blog (http://intertwingly.net/blog/). For this XHTML entry:

http://intertwingly.net/blog/3160.html

the Atom feed is

http://intertwingly.net/blog/3160.atom

and, as you can see, it's the entry and its comments. (Handled
as a list of entries, no hierarchy.)

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

Also, check out http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/1434
(scroll down to "Comment Feeds").

[Andy C]

Not directly related to your question but a useful atom feed is

<site>/<tag>/atom

On May 28, 4:40 am, Rodent of Unusual Size <Ken+Habari-us...@Coar.Org>
wrote:
> Also, check outhttp://www.xml.com/lpt/a/1434

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

On May 28, 4:15 am, Andy C <andyc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Not directly related to your question but a useful atom feed is
>
> <site>/<tag>/atom

You mean <site>/tag/<tag>/atom ? Thanks, I forgot that one.
Is there a <site>/<tag>/atom/comments ? .. guess not.

/me wonders if that would be a meaningful feed..

probably not, since Atom doesn't distinguish readily between
main entries and comments (well, there's the 'rel="comment"'
attribute, but..).

[jhominal]

Comment entries are titled with "on <post title>". Which means that,
even in the feed, it is easy to know which entry is being commented.
That basically destroys the complaint you have about feeds #2 and #4.

I believe that you are completely forgetting that an Atom feed does
not exist by itself - its primary purpose is to be consumed by a
program (generally a feed aggregator). In that context, here are
usecases that I have for each of Habari's default feeds.

> 1. Page/slugs (<site>/atom/<pagenum>)

No need to explain.

> 2. All comments (<site>/atom/comments)

- I am the site owner, and I want to know when one of the posts is
commentated - I could even have software that pings me automatically
when a feed is updated - in which case, having posts in feed#2 would
be an inconvenience. And because every comment title in the Atom feed
bears the post's title, I always know for which post the comment was.
- I add it to feed#1 and I now have both posts and comments in my
aggregator. Because the posts and comments are in separate feeds, I
can organize each of them in different folders (when I see 1000+ new
entries in my aggregator, I can see that 950 of them are comments and
not panic)

> 3. A single entry (<site>/<slug>/atom)

If I have not subscribed to feed#1, I may want to subscribe to feed#3
so that I have it in my feed aggregator, and I can either keep it
alone (I'm on Google Reader, so the articles that are on my Google
Reader constitute a kind of Blogs archive for me), or I can put feed#4
in my aggregator at the same time. While that feed is the one whose
utility is most debatable, it is in fact required if you are to have a
coherent offer.

> 4. A single entry's comments (<site>/<slug>/atom/comments)

I add it to either feed#1 or feed#3 and I have all comments about a
precise blog post in my aggregator - I let the other feed (either 1 or
3) have the corresponding blog entry.

In addition to lack of flexibility, I see an enormous downside with
your feeds (feed#1+2, feed#3+4), that would prevent me from ever using
them: If there are too many comments, the post entries will be pushed
out of feed#1+2 much sooner than when feed#1 is alone - it will be
easy for an aggregator to miss your entries because people made many
comments. By keeping the feed#1 separate, I insure that, at least,
even if many people comment very quickly, they should still get all of
my blog entries (they may miss comments though). And in feed#3+4,
unless you're willing to keep the entry and an unlimited number of
comments, the entry will eventually be pushed out - something that
cannot happen if you keep feed#3 separate.

In short, the small convenience that such feeds bring (I don't have to
subscribe to two feeds if I want to have it and its comments on my
feed aggregator) does not make up for the inherent drawbacks. Now that
I think of it, the drawbacks are so big that I would not be in favor
of putting them as possible feed options in Habari's default feed
plugin. It looks like a neat idea at first, and only later does one
realize that it is a trap.
--
Jean Hominal