What I wrote yesterday could be defined as a lost of time. It is another garage made code that try to cope with something that is not built for it.

Blogs has evolved in past years. However, feeds are stock into the past. More and more users are using these syndication technologies, and these new users ask for much. So, how could we give them much? Actually by making garage code like the one I do yesterday.

This is just another demonstration of the specifications problem. Things move slowly. The only way that things move faster is that someone with influence gets the bull by the horns and does it.

By example, personally I would like to have a “comment” tag where to put the comments of my readers.

However, will I call every feed reader companies to tell them to take these new tags into account, and to display them properly in their application? I do not think so.

RSS 2.0 support XML namespaces. However, who cares? I mean, feed readers will have access to the structured information; however, they will not display it if they do not care about.

It is why technologies such as XForms are interesting. What is an XForm? It is an XML based form. The purpose is to give me the power to build my custom forms with a simple XML script. Then with an XForm, I can create my custom web form that will send me the retrieved information in an xml format I previously specified. Plus, I am sure that the form will be displayed by the presentation software (a browser or anything else) the way I want it to be presented.

Now what I want is something that does the same thing as XForm but more presentation oriented. The W3C answered the needs with the XFDL specification. Then, as a blogger, if I want that my posts and comments be seen in a traditional Usenet readers interface, the only thing I need to do is to add a “simple” snippet of script into my blog’s feed. Then I will be sure that all my readers, platform and software independent, will see the information I broadcast as I want them to see it.

I think that this is one of the only way to see the future. The feed readers will only have to replace their “Web Browser Layer” by a “XFDL (or any other interface markup languages) Layer”. Then everybody will be able to do exactly what they want, without caring about the compatibility with all the softwares on the market.

Right now, such modules are only available as plug-ins for current web-browsers. Sometime they work, other time they do not. When the guys in the IE or Firefox teams will integrate it and make it available to other developers through some API, the whole landscape of web feeds publishing certainly will change.

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