[georss] GeoAtom (split from Re: GeoRSS Location References)

[Andrew Turner]

On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 12:46 PM, Raj Singh <raj at rajsingh.org> wrote:
 > On Apr 1, 2008, at 12:41 PM, Sean Gillies wrote:
 >  > Wait, are multiple entry locations making a comeback?
 >
 >  No! Andrew, let me re-write your example. I thought we were agreeing
 >  to this:

 Mikel locked me in a car on a road trip and preliminarily convinced me
 that Multiple entries is better. There are all the reasons that Sean,
 Mikel, Josh all point out: works with existing, semantic, etc.

 However, the one that won me over was the fact that Atom entry already
 supports (or can be expanded to support) many more rich attributes:
 categories, time, authors... Simply, a story can have multiple
 locations that happened at different "times". If we wanted to carry
 georss:collection forward to handle this, we would get into a huge
 quagmire of extending geo* to do all sorts of non-geo things: time,
 categories, tags, et al.

 Instead, go back to the tenant that we should just be adding Geo to
 existing formats/practices rather than bringing them into Geo.  or
 something like that.

 Of course, I will follow-up by saying that I think multiple entries to
 handle multiple geometries would also suggest that batch RESTful
 operations are a good idea. While it's nice to be able to edit any
 single geometry, I shouldn't have to hit the server 4 times just to
 post 1 story with 3 locations. Or by editing that entry to remove a
 location and add 2 would mean making 4 calls (PUT entry, DELETE
 location, POST 2 locations).

 What seems better is to PUT the multiple entries - and if there is any
 failure, then the entire request fails (transactional) with
 appropriate error responses for why it failed (bad geometry or title
 in one of the geometry-entries perhaps).


 >
 >  <entry>
 >     <link href="http://example.org/entries/1"/>
 >     <title>Cedarburg Trip</title>
 >     <summary>We went to visit
 >        <span id="downtown">downtown Cedarburg</span>
 >
 >        before the conference. Had some great sandwiches at Joe's.
 >        If you haven't been to Cedarburg, Wisconsin, then you haven't
 >        really experienced the MidWest...
 >     </summary>
 >     <georss:where id="downtown">
 >        <georss:point>...</georss:point>
 >     </georss:where>
 >   </entry>

 I admit that this I liked this idea originally. Very succinct.
 However, there are several problems. First is that you probably would
 have the summary wrapped in a CDATA, since it isn't really part of the
 Atom XML. This would preclude id bashing, but also it's only a fake or
 tenuous link from the georss:where id to the span id in the summary.
 It would be just as meaningful to point to a binary address in an
 image file.


 >
 >  (2 identical IDs are probably a bad idea, so a different ID or
 >  attribute should be used)
 >

 I suggest putting up your suggestions and basic thoughts on the GeoRSS
 Proposals for Multiple Entries, Location Reference so we can start
 collating for a poll.