The IETF has released ‘The Atom Syndication Format’ as Request for Comments (RFC) #4287 in the Standards Track. The document provides an official publication for Atom as a standard XML-based Web content and metadata syndication format. Atom is considered by many as the latest evolutionary stage of development for “RSS”, which enjoys wide use in a number of not-standardized versions. Atom is an XML-based document format that describes lists of related information known as “feeds”. Feeds are composed of a number of items, known as “entries”, each with an extensible set of attached metadata. For example, each entry has a title. The primary use case that Atom addresses is the syndication of Web content such as weblogs and news headlines to Web sites as well as directly to user agents. (Hat tip: Robin Cover’s XML.org Daily Newslink)
Links of interest:
atom, rfc, ietf
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