Requesting comments on a couple of proposed clarifications to the RSS 2.0 spec.

1. Under Elements of <item>, replace the lead paragraph with the following. The new text is highlighted in green.

A channel may contain any number of <item>s. An item may represent a "story" -- much like a story in a newspaper or magazine; if so its description is a synopsis of the story, and the link points to the full story. An item may also be complete in itself, if so, the description contains the text, and the link and title may be omitted. Either way, <description> contains entity-encoded HTML. All elements of an item are optional, however at least one of title or description must be present.

2. Immediately following that section, a link to a page of examples, authored by Nick Bradbury, author of the FeedDemon aggregator.

Notes: We believe aggregators already assume the item-level description contains entity-encoded HTML.  We'd like to make the changes to the spec early next week and if there are no deal-stoppers, we will. Please comment below. Off-topic and personal comments will be deleted.

Thanks to: Nick Bradbury, Brent Simmons, Greg Reinacker, Jake Savin, Dare Obasanjo, Matt Mullenweg for their help working out this proposed clarification.

# Posted on 6/4/04; 11:59:11 AM -