Supporters of rival news feed spec Atom wondered why another version of RSS was even needed.Shouldering past the fear and loathing over Microsoft's supposed plans to
co-opt and rename its first implementation of the Web publishing technology, a third, fully XML version of RSS was released for review and comment on Thursday.
The RSS (Really Simply Syndication) 3 specification aims to fix perceived problems of inadequate documentation and "lack of concern towards modern necessities" in RSS 2.0.
RSS 3 contains two specs, only one of which, the Lite version, was released for public consumption. RSS Lite is a stripped-down version of the Full version that's designed for use by content aggregators that reside on a bigger program or site, such as Mozilla Firefox.
A high-end aggregator such as Mozilla Thunderbird, which handles RSS feeds, news and e-mail reading for the same source, would use the RSS 3 Full spec when it becomes available.
True to form, proponents of rival news feed spec Atom were up in arms over the introduction of RSS 3, saying that there's simply no need to fix RSS when Atom has already arrived to fill in where the older, more established RSS left off.
Read the rest of this eWEEK story: "Lightweight Version of RSS Released"
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