WANTED: Schema for RSS Aggregation
I'm wondering if we are going to see an standardized XML format for describing aggregations of RSS feeds. To illustrate the point: I've done all this work on bloglines to set it up with the blogs I care about, but now I'm kinda locked in there. It would be nice if I could export a description of my aggregation into a standard format that looked roughly like this...
<feed-list>
<feed>
<url>http://pcal.net/blog/index.rdf</url>
<format>rss-1.0</format>
<name>pcal's blog</name>
<category>stuff</category>
</feed>
...
</feed-list>
...and be able to import it into a different RSS reader.
Such a format would also allow people to easily publish and consume each other's reading lists. This in turn could create a new class of application, which would allow you to surf a much larger version of the p2p-ish network that bloglines already provides (i.e., you can browse around to see what other people near you are reading about).
Of course, this all is exactly why the RSS reader vendors would probably be reluctant to embrace such a standard, so it may never happen.
Maybe such a thing is already in the works? I tried google but came up empty.
UPDATE: I found this:
http://opml.scripting.comLooks like the userland guys tried it a long time ago, didn't get very far.
You can find a description of the feed format at
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-format-02.txt
The Atom working group has not agreed on which Schema language(s), if any, to use for Atom. In part, because XML schema is terrible for extensibility and versioning.
I did a stab of WSDL 2.0, using an earlier version of the schema description for Atom, at
http://www.pacificspirit.com/blog/2004/07/05/atom_03_wsdl_20
Randy has provided WSDL 1.1 at
http://www.kbcafe.com/iBLOGthere4iM/?guid=20040614174016
which is the source for the schema that I used.
Hmm, right, but I'm not sure that's quite what I'm getting at. As I understand it, Atom is essentially an improved RSS - another way to describe a single blog.
What I'm talking about is a way to describe a blogroll. I think that's different, no? This would include the feed URLs and some metadata that I provide, such as categorization of the feed and maybe a comment about why I think it's interesting. It does not include any content (i.e. entries) from any of feeds.
I suppose you could can this by creating a feed in which each entry corresponds to each blog in my blogroll, but that seems a little bit hackish.