Netscape Says No RSS 0.91 For You

beat.bolli asks: "As of today, Netscape has 'updated' its my.netscape.com personalized portal to version 2. It seems that they decided to drop all external RDF channels. What gives?" Well, Will Sargent writes: "Netscape removed the RSS 0.91 DTD from their website. This means that all RSS feeds which depend on the RSS 0.91 (many, MANY news sites) cannot be used with a validating parser. Rael Dornfest has more details."

Cached DTD

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:my.netscape.c om/publish/formats/rss-spec-0.91.html+rss-0.91.dtd &hl=en [google.com]

Theres your missing DTD (kind of).

Re:Mozilla & My Netscape?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla .81

That's a mighty big caliber you've got there, partner...

Re:Forking RSS

[Anonymous Coward]

The people overusing those terms are just people who read the jargon and try to use as many slang words from it as possible to seem more "hax0rific". You can always tell a wannabe becuase they will try and say you used some nonesense slang word incorrectly (according to the "jargon file", like it's some bible) and then try to use at least 1 geek slang every other sentence. Fucking annoying, and stupid.

Re: Boxen

[Anonymous Coward]

Except its not irregular. Boxes is the correct term. You're just trying to appear clever by irregularizing one of the few regular english words.

Don't you think english is fucked up enough as it is?

DTDs are the spawn of the devil

[Anonymous Coward]

Non validating XML and/or XML Schema all the way!

Re:No, XML and parsers are broken as designed

[Anonymous Coward]

In my work with XML, the URI has not been used as the "key". The URI has only been used if the Doctype is unknown. For example in a WML document.. the DOCTYPe looks like: <!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml"> The key here isn't the URL, but instead "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN". So if you locally have a suitable DTD for that doctype your a-ok, and don't need to retrieve the DTD via the URL. Eduardo Fernandez

Re:Yes, you misunderstood.

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeating your nonsense does not make it true. Parsers using the URL in the document to obtain a DTD are broken because this is not the intended use of the URL. Of course i have seen many broken XML-Parsers out there because so many idiots do not seem to understand this.

Re:For those who don't know: What is RSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please credit your source, plagiarist karma whore [userland.com]. Thank you.

Re:Alternatives? (aka SSP)

[Anonymous Coward]

well, this may be a bit premature, but a while back, a friend and i started building our own little uber-portal, which was in concept similar to my.netscape.com, but a little bit better in implementation. (or at least we think so)

it's up and running at www.fyuze.com [fyuze.com] and for the most part, it works. the documentation is still a little confusing, and there are a few bugs, but hey, it's a work in progress.

it supports RDF, HTML and in the future XML & XSLT for digestion to other platforms (ie WAP). it's essentially free, and built on open source technology.

right now, the content selection is rather sparse, so if you run a site, add your channel/feed to the system.

at any rate, give it try. it may be a good place for all those left homeless by my.netscape.com.

(disclaimer: there is mention of charging for content distribution on the site. this is something we are still working on for high-load super-customizeable feeds. all the basic services are free to both distributor and consumer)

Attn: Submoronic Moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't because there's some sudden inability to find a copy of the DTD, the problem is that there are a lot of pointers pointing to a specific place on Netscape's site. And now those pointers are broken.

I waited to see how long it would take you idiots to moderate the parent up to 5. At least one person had the sense to moderate it as "Overrated." But, even though the current score is 4, I'm ending the contest now since there've been 5 "Informative" moderations to the post.

It's things like this which causes the outside world to have the impression that the only knowledge that Slashdot users have is the knowledge of how to bitch about things that they know nothing about. And, well, I guess it's pretty hard to disagree with them.

So, thanks, you imbeciles. I'll be posting this anonymously, because I understand that you're not just clueless, you're childishly vindictive.

Conversion Tool from DTD to XML Schema

[Anonymous Coward]

here [w3.org]

Re:RSS 0.92 is compatible with RSS 0.91

[Anonymous Coward]

Pot - kettle - black.

RSS 0.91 was completely incompatible with 0.9; the authors of 0.91 drank Dave's Kool-aid, and made it non-RDF. 1.0 *is* backwards-compatible with 0.9, just not the 0.9x orphans.

Opera Left in the Cold

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't expect Netscape to help out their competitors much, but I can't even get into my.netscape.com with Opera 5.0. I find it funny that even IE is allowed in, but not Opera. This is the kind of callous, inconsiderate web design approach I despise. Only allowing the main browsers, and blocking everything else, no matter how capable it might be, or what the user's choice. It's HTML for god's sake, even Lynx could view it in some form.

C'mon Netscape, kick IE out too. You've already blocked one high-quality, fast performance browser. Why not block another?

Forking RSS

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say it, but this is YA example of why forking over petty differences can be A Bad Thing. If one stubborn contingent hadn't steadfastly clung onto the deprecated RSS 0.91 spec instead of moving to RSS 1.0 [purl.org] (which returns to RSS's more dynamic roots), said contingent wouldn't be locked out because *a single document was removed from a web site*. Yeah, Netscape did the wrong thing. But the proponents of the outdated and outmoded spec should have seen this coming a mile away.

Re:Yes, you misunderstood.

[kju]

Once again: To use a validating parser you need the DTD, of course. But the W3C makes no provision where to get this DTD! The Declaration inside a RDF-File for example is containing a xmlns-Attribute. That is XML-_N_ame_s_pace. Nothing more. See for example the declaration in http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf:

You can not run a validating parser solely on this. Because the URIs given above are in fact (what you appearently do not want to understand) only Namespace, and not a reference to the DTD.

There is no defined way to automatically determine where to get the DTD. You need to get it yourself and supply it to your validating Parser.

I've given the XSL(T)-Example. The XSL(T)-Declaration contains a URI as well. But the DTD is not there, only a information by the W3C, that this is the XSL(T)-Namespace. After all you may imagine that the W3C knows what it does. A valid XSL(T)-Document does not contain any reference about where to get the DTD. This was specifically intended so, as the Locations of DTD can change, as the example here shows us.

So you are still wrong. Having the DTD disappeared from Netscapes site DOES NOT make problems to validating parsers by default. Just obtain the DTD elsewhere and feed it into your parser.

Of course it is a mess that the DTD disappeared from Netscapes Site, as it makes it more difficult to find it anywhere in the net. And whats more annoying is that Netscape copyrighted the DTD and you may not be allowed to host this DTD anywhere.

But this IS NOT A PROBLEM BY CONCEPT. The W3C recognized that it can be virtually impossible to maintain a ever lasting repository for a DTD, and therefore does not urge you to make any links to your DTD. The URI in the Declaration is only Namespace, and you don't even need to put a Webpage there. The W3C itself had not webpages at there URIs at the beginning. Only after having too much people who do not understand (like you) complaing the added this short text. You can use mailto:bla@fasel or gopher:.. or telnet: or anyother unique URI you might imagine. Just make it unique for a given DTD.

Re:Yes, you misunderstood.

[kju]

Seems, Slashdot has tilted my examples. So, here we go. This is the RDF-Declaration from slashdot:

<rdf:RDF
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-synt ax -ns#"
xmlns="http://my.netscape.com/rdf/simple/0.9/">

So you see. There are only xml-namespace URIs there. Nothing which a validation parser can / or should use to get the DTD. Parsers which uses such URIs to obtain a DTD are broken, and won't even be able to parse XSL(T), because the W3C _has_ _no_ DTD at the URIs given.

So to parse the slashdot.rdf it does not make any difference if the DTD is there, or not, because it does not contain any reference to the DTD. How you get the DTD and how to supply it to your XML-Parser is up to you and your parser. But don't use URIs supplied in the document for things they aren't intended to. This can and will break.

Re:Yes, you misunderstood.

[kju]

Instead of getting nasty to some slashdot moderators, reread my original posting. It was not crap, but fully true.

At no point i talked about any other URIs than these in namespace. These URIs do not contain DTDs or anything useful else.

Yes, the DOCTYPE declaration indeed points to an DTD which should be existant. But these URLs still can change, and so you might have to change your DOCTYPE declarations once in a while. Shouldn't be a big hassle. Even a script can do this.

Good parsers should work with a local copy anyway, to take load from the network (its silly to fetch the DTD from an external source every time). Not so good parsers may depend on the external DTD, but this is in my eyes an concept flaw.

For production use you will likely turn of validation anyway to speed the things up.

So my point still holds true: While it is nasty that Netscape removed the DTD, this does not need to break things by concept. Its worse that all the information disappeared too.

So go out, let a script change your DOCTYPE declarations, and you will have valid documents once again. No big deal. You might want to exchange the URL to a local DTD when you use a dumb parser which does not allow to override the source of an DTD.

So, Mr. I'm So Important Because I Helped With An Oreilly Book: While your points hold true, my message is valid as well. The disappearing of the DTD is a hassle, but its one you can overcome easily. And that is the point in this discussion. Some think the declaration of an DTD ressource is an design flaw in XML. I don't think so. There is no scheme for storing DTDs which can and will last for ever.

Its only a flaw in parsers which aren't prepared to that this URL can (and will) break. So if this debacle shows us one thing it is that some parsers need to get smarter. This won't be the last DTD to disappear from there old location.

You were true, and so where me. But at least i did not do such arrogant postings with references to the great things i have done like you did. You should probably change your attitude.

No, No, No. Someone misunderstood the concept here

[kju]

There is nothing really wrong with Netscape removing the DTD from the "URL" which is declared in a RSS-Document.

By Specification this URI does not need to contain a valid URL, its just a Namespace to have a unique unifier for this specific DTD.

For example take a look at the URL supplied with XSL(T)-Stylesheets: http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform. This won't give you the DTD for XSL(T)-Documents. All you get is a webpage which simply states 'This is the XSLT namespace'. And even W3C put this webpage there only after having to much people complain that this URL was in the first place 404 (not existant).

You even do not need to use a HTTP-URI for the namespace. You are perfectly legal to use a (unique!) email address or something else.

So no validating parser should do anything with this Namespace URI. At least not try to obtain the DTD from there (imagine a validating parser sending you an email asking for the DTD...). If the DTD is needed, it has to be supplied and associated by other means. Not by the URI.

So there is nothing really wrong with netscape to remove the DTD. There are copies of it floating arround the net, and they can be used for validating parsers. And for simply _using_ RSS you won't even need the DTD. Validation costs time and in most real, life application you want to turn it off anyway (if implemented at all).

Re: Boxen

[pohl]

I don't think it's about posturing as "clever". It's mere playfulness. Anyone who has forgotten play needs to step away from the keyboard.

Alternatives?

[jamus]

The My Netscape portal was great for having very customized content, i.e., anyone could create a channel and publish it. The top news stories for a lot of the sites I visit (slashdot, freshmeat, mozilla, mozillazine, and a few others) were on my front page.

Now that the custom channels are gone, what alternatives do we have for this portal?

Re:Yes, you misunderstood.

[Matts]

For christ sake, I'm so sick of correcting this.

You're talking about NAMESPACES!!! Not DTDs.

Don't believe me? Read it from the author of the XML spec [activestate.com]. See also my own posts in that thread.

Now slashdot moderators, please read some damned XML books before moderating crap like the above up. I recommend XML in a Nutshell, which I was a tech editor for.

Re:Yes, you misunderstood.

[Matts]

Just in case you still don't believe me, read what Tim Bray, one of the co-authors of XML has to say about it [activestate.com].

Re:No, XML and parsers are broken as designed

[Matts]

DTD's are nothing like namespaces, and your conclusion is incorrect.

There is a PUBLIC identifier allowed in the XML DOCTYPE which is purely symbolic, but that's not what we're talking about here.

Yes, you misunderstood.

[Matts]

We're not talking about namespaces here. We're talking about DTDs, particularly the SYSTEM identifier, which is meant to be fetchable (it even says so in the XML spec).

RSS 0.91 isn't even namespace aware.

Plus, you say "for simply _using_ RSS you won't even need the DTD". That's only *mostly* true, unfortunately. The RSS 0.91 DTD contains all the HTML entity references that are commonly used in RSS 0.91 files, and an XML parser will choke without these being defined somewhere (and that somewhere happens to be the DTD) (well actually a non validating parser can just ignore the entities (providing they are syntactically correct), but then you'd end up with strange looking content).

Re:Yes, you misunderstood.

[Matts]

Once again: To use a validating parser you need the DTD, of course. But the W3C makes no provision where to get this DTD! The Declaration inside a RDF-File for example is containing a xmlns-Attribute. That is XML-_N_ame_s_pace. Nothing more. See for example the declaration in http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf:

OK:

$ g-request http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax -ns#"
xmlns="http://my.netscape.com/rdf/simple/0.9/">
...
Sorry, no cigar. This does not contain a DOCTYPE declaration. Try an RSS 0.91 file, e.g. from xmlhack.com:

$ g-request http://xmlhack.com/rsscat.php
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE rss PUBLIC "-//Netscape Communications//DTD RSS 0.91//EN"
"http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.91.d td">
<rss version="0.91">
...

You can not run a validating parser solely on this. Because the URIs given above are in fact (what you appearently do not want to understand) only Namespace, and not a reference to the DTD.

No, you cannot run a validating parser solely on the first one because it uses XML namespaces! Try the RSS 0.91 file format. That's what we're talking about here.

There is no defined way to automatically determine where to get the DTD. You need to get it yourself and supply it to your validating Parser.

I, and the XML spec, beg to differ. I quote:

[Definition: The SystemLiteral is called the entity's system identifier. It is a URI reference (as defined in [IETF RFC 2396], updated by [IETF RFC 2732]), meant to be dereferenced to obtain input for the XML processor to construct the entity's replacement text.]

How do you dereference HTTP URI's? Well shock horror you use the HTTP protocol! ;-)

I've given the XSL(T)-Example. The XSL(T)-Declaration contains a URI as well.

No, it does NOT. There is no Declaration, only a start element. The reason being that XSLT uses XML namespaces, and namespaces aren't compatible with DTDs (well, they *mostly* aren't compatible - but I'll leave it to a book like XML in a Nutshell to explain the finer details).

But the DTD is not there, only a information by the W3C, that this is the XSL(T)-Namespace. After all you may imagine that the W3C knows what it does.

Correct, the W3C does know what it does. The document pointed at by the namespace (which as you correctly, but confusingly point out, doesn't actually need to exist) at the W3C site is in RDDL. Go to XML.com to find out what RDDL is. (actually it might not yet be in RDDL, because the W3C is only slowly moving over to RDDL. But the Schema namespace *does* point to a RDDL document, and this is a sign of things to come).

A valid XSL(T)-Document does not contain any reference about where to get the DTD.

That's because XSLT can't use DTDs, because it uses XML namespaces.

This was specifically intended so, as the Locations of DTD can change, as the example here shows us.

Actually the reason namespaces chose not to have anything at the URI is because they didn't have a namespace compatible schema system in place at the time, and so nobody could agree what to put there. Now the people on the XML-Dev mailing list have agreed on putting RDDL documents there.

So you are still wrong. Having the DTD disappeared from Netscapes site DOES NOT make problems to validating parsers by default. Just obtain the DTD elsewhere and feed it into your parser.

That's possible if you implement a custom URI resolver, but barely anybody does that because it's not the right way to go about fixing the problem (which is to use a catalog system based on the PUBLIC identifier instead).

But this IS NOT A PROBLEM BY CONCEPT. The W3C recognized that it can be virtually impossible to maintain a ever lasting repository for a DTD, and therefore does not urge you to make any links to your DTD. The URI in the Declaration is only Namespace, and you don't even need to put a Webpage there. The W3C itself had not webpages at there URIs at the beginning. Only after having too much people who do not understand (like you) complaing the added this short text. You can use mailto:bla@fasel or gopher:.. or telnet: or anyother unique URI you might imagine. Just make it unique for a given DTD.

You're talking about namespaces again, not DTD's. Please go and buy a good book on XML (such as XML in a Nutshell, which I was one of two tech editors for) that will help clear up your confusion.

Re:Konqi, too (was Re:Opera Left in the Cold)

[spitzak]

I would agree they are being stupid.

Why can't they just insert a "this may not work on your browser" message at the top of the page and then spew one of the versions anyway. Maybe it will work, and you have warned them that it might not so who cares if it does not, and this requires no more work than the current scheme.

Re:No, XML and parsers are broken as designed

[Ben Hutchings]

Validating XML parsers, on the other hand, screwed the pooch by not providing for documents to be validated against any but the specified DTD.

They should be able to find a local copy of the DTD by its public ID in the local SGML catalogue - that's if it has a public ID, of course.

Re:OMG!!!

[enterfornone]

well it's better than letting them kill people after they drink alcohol

--

Re:Opera Left in the Cold

[FFFish]

Why should I give an incomplete, buggy browser a chance?

It's time to quit being silly about software. It's not a moral system, it's not art: it's just a tool.

And like tools, you can run off and get ones that are so cheap, they're damn near free. But the first time you use them, they snap off and you bust your knuckles on the engine block! That's Netscape/Mozilla for ya.

Or you can go out and pay good money and get good tools. MSIE is like that; you may not pay immediately out of pocket, but you do through your other MS purchases. They're kind of like the Craftsman of tools: pretty darn good quality, but maybe they don't carry the particular special-duty gadget you need.

Or you can go out and pay a premiumish sort of amount and get a *great* tool. That's Opera. It's the Snap-On of tools. And if you need a special-duty gadget, and you're willing to pay, Opera will customize for you.

Over the years, I've bought cheap and I've bought quality.

And I have never regretted spending the extra money on quality.

I'm not going to choose software that "may not be [great], but it'll do the job." Not for software that I rely on every single hour of my working day.

So fuck MSIE, fuck Mozilla, and, in particular, fuck Netscape. I'm using Opera: it works better than any of them, making me more productive and less frustrated.

--

Re:Opera Left in the Cold

[FFFish]

Frankly, I can't imagine why everyone doesn't just say "fuck Netscape," and start using a *good* browser.

Every since their debacle with having valid CSS cause hard crashes to the browser, I, for one, refuse to code work-arounds for its HTML and CSS deficencies.

Choose Better: Choose Opera.


--

Web vs Paper publishing

[grahammm]

This highlights one problem from which Web publishing suffers compared to (tradional) Paper publishing. If a reference is made to a Web document (via URI) then if the publisher removes or changes the document the reference becomes invalid, or refers to the "wrong" thing. When the reference is made to a paper document, the book may go out of print (which in the case of journals is almost immediate), but this does not prevent you refering to the copy you already own or visiting the library to consult it.

Re:For those who don't know: What is RSS?

[Sethb]

Dave has also put the DTD back up on one of Userland's site, available at:

http://www.scripting.com/dtd/rss-0_91.dtd [scripting.com]
---

Re:No, XML and parsers are broken as designed

[ajm]

Depends how much you want to code. Certainly the java parsers I've used (xerces etc) let you do entity resolution yourself and so look for the dtd anywhere you want to. In fact I've actually done this.

Re:Corporate justification of mistrust..

[merlyn]

It's my understanding that there are two camps here:

1. Those who believe that the DTD URI is a real live URL to be fetched to contain the DTD
2. Those who believe that the DTD URI is merely a URI, to distinguish that DTD from all other possible DTDs in the world.

All AOL-Netscape did was mess with the heads of the first camp. Those who were in the second camp are still chugging away fine.

It's also my understanding that those who developed XML are firmly in the second camp. Yes, a URI-to-URL mapping mechanism needs to be developed for DTD URIs. But just because that's not in place, let's not rank on Netscape for their choice to make the one-to-one trivial mapping no longer valid for RSS 0.91.

Re:For those who don't know: What is RSS?

[warlock]

bzzzt! wrong -

RSS stands for RDF Site Summary, not Rich Site Summary. And RDF, as we all should know stands for Resource Description Framework.

So, RSS really expands to Resource Description Framework Site Summary.

No wonder PCMCIA.

Re:Mozilla & My Netscape?

[Trelane]

Yes. It doesn't work with Mozilla (you just get one big column, as reported below).

My best guess would be the use of the <layer> tag, which mozilla doesn't support [netscape.net].

So, basically, Netscape is breaking Standards. (As does Internet Exploitable.)
--
Trelane -------------------------------------------------- ----------

Re:It's all about the user agent

[Trelane]

<script>
var ua=navigator.userAgent;
//redirect badbrowsers
if (ua.indexOf('MSIE 4')!=-1||ua.indexOf('MSIE 5')!=-1) redirectPage=false;
else if (navigator.appName=="Netscape"&&parseInt(navigator .appVersion)>=4)
redirectPage=false;
//redirect all other clients not satisfied above
else redirectPage=true;
if (redirectPage) location.href="/shared/badbrowser.psp";
</script>

That's what's doing the browser recognition (and "bad browser" redirection)
--
Trelane -------------------------------------------------- ----------

Re:Hmmm...

[Anm]

Just replying to all the people here who don't get it (apparently several replied to this parent's message):

Switching to Schemas will buy you nothing with respect to this problem. You still need a stable URL for the Schema, just like the DTD. Again, as someone pointed out, it is a flaw in the XML standard.

Anm

Works in Netscape 6...

[Mike A.]

So it seems that they only work in Netscape 4.x, IE, and Netscape 6, and that they look at the user agent to decide which they're supporting. One of the less than amusing side effects is that they don't work for Mozilla, which uses a different user agent string than Netscape 6... I have to acknowledge that this isn't an encouraging sign.

--

The DTD is available elsewhere

[J.J.]

From Dave's Scripting News [scripting.com] on Friday, 27 Apr 01 [userland.com]:

From the If-It-Weren't-So-Sad-It-Would-Be-Funny Department, yesterday when Netscape (apparently) deprecated [dictionary.com] RSS and broke all the links to their RSS stuff, they also broke people whose XML parsers require a DTD. The old URL [netscape.com] for the RSS 0.91 DTD is totally 404 not found. John Munsch has a report [yahoo.com] from the field. I put a copy [scripting.com] of the DTD into a folder here on scripting.com, and it will stay there, Murphy-willing, for perpetuity.

You can find his copy of the DTD here [scripting.com].

J.J.

Re:Alternatives?

[mkrus]

Try out NewsIsFree [newsisfree.com]. 1400+ news feeds you can arrange on your customized pages...

Re:It's all about the user agent

[woodja]

I tried to visit the page in Konqueror and got an 'Invalid Browser Configuration.' (http://my.netscape.com/shared/badbrowser.psp).

These notices are showing up at various places around the web. I guess they think writing things using w3c standards is too difficult in comparison to writing them for two browsers (IE 4/5.x and Netscape 4.x).

No, XML and parsers are broken as designed

[marxmarv]

XML's flaw was using a URI as a primary key to an document (or object) type, ignoring the cost of maintaining a stable URI (especially in these days of WIPO domain name arbitration and companies that rename themselves to escape the past) and ignoring the established wisdom of never exposing a primary key to the public. The whole DTD mechanism was poorly thought-out as well; why would you ever want to carry a DTD around with a document unless you foresaw a need to validate the structure of a document by agents that don't have it? This greatly reduces the utility of validation to near uselessness.

Validating XML parsers, on the other hand, screwed the pooch by not providing for documents to be validated against any but the specified DTD. At the very least, new validating parsers ought to maintain an internal table of aliases, so that you can validate documents of type http://www.netscape.com/~nportman/grits.dtd against file:/home/marxmarv/project/dtds/hotgrits.dtd without changing the XML DTD specification or the input at all, and would also enable DTD's to be specified by, say, MIME Content-Type.

None of this fixes the copyright problem, but it does keep entire applications from going away because of some sysadmin cock-up. (As an aside, at least .NET will show the sheeple how often network blackouts happen...)

-jhp

Re:Mozilla & My Netscape?

[DrKirwin]

> looks the same in everthing I try

Hm. How about mozilla 8.1 on Linux? I get all my little panels stretched across the screen instead of in three columns.

Mozilla & My Netscape?

[DrKirwin]

The new My Netscape looks great in IE, but it's bad wrong with Mozilla. What gives?

Re:RSS 0.92 is compatible with RSS 0.91

[darylp]

That's one thing that the RSS 1.0 fascists won't ever tell you. RSS 1.0 is NOT compatible with RSS 0.92. It's a totally different syntax.

Of course, they'll whinge and moan and say "upgrade to our new fancy spec" that only about eight geeks in the world can comprehend. When the truth is that 0.91 was a standard that EVERYONE could understand, including Frontpage-using HTML novices - EXACTLY the kind of people that the uber-geek elite want to stamp out of existence.

Sorry, geeks, it's a big wide web out there, and everyone's invited. Stop trying to bury web standards under layers of incomprehensibility.

In the meantime, as Alien54 suggests, RSS 0.91 providers can switch their Doctype to 0.92. The DTD's on Userland, which at least is run by someone with a clue.

Then everything should start working smoothly again, without having to learn an entirely new specification.

Re:Konqi, too (was Re:Opera Left in the Cold)

[Simon Brooke]

if you configure Konqueror to pretend to be Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 4.0) it renders just fine.

Yes, I know, following up to yourself. Really sad.

However, the funny thing is my girlfriend had a look with (real) Internet Explorer 5.5... and while the page renders fine in Konqueror pretending to be IE 5.5, two times in three it won't render on the real thing!

Re:Use WDDX for syndication.

[Simon Brooke]

Have you seen the license [openwddx.org]? This is just another way of going around the same block again. The lesson is, don't trust or support any commercial entity with Web standards, whether it be AOL, Allaire, Macromedia or any other. Trust only genuinely open community projects and genuinely open not-for-profits.

Konqi, too (was Re:Opera Left in the Cold)

[Simon Brooke]

Interestingly, it redirects Konqueror 2.1 [konqueror.org] to 'badbrowser.psp' [mynetscape.com]; but if you configure Konqueror to pretend to be Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 4.0) it renders just fine. I'm seeing this more and more frequently with commercial sites - if they don't recognise the browser, they don't make any attempt to render a page for it. I think this is professional incompetence, frankly.

Re:No, XML and parsers are broken as designed

[Big Jojo]

Validating XML parsers, on the other hand, screwed the pooch by not providing for documents to be validated against any but the specified DTD.

Why don't you buy a clue?

Any SAX/SAX2 parser supports that, and has done so forever ... org.xml.sax.EntityResolver is the important class.

So the problem is EXCLUSIVELY in the application space. Either for not using that feature of their parsers, or for using a broken parser API when they could have used one that knows how to work when there is no network connected ...

Re:what does "zulu" time mean??

[mike_the_kid]

Zulu Time means about the same as GMT.
Z in civil aviation is Zulu, and I guess because it the last letter of the alphabet they use it to refer to the time at the prime meridean. (Greenwich, England is at the prime meridean.)

Walled Gardens

[owillis]

See people, AOL is the real enemy here. Within their walled garden they want you to only see AOL/Time Warner properties - "screw the rest of 'em" is now job one, more than ever. "Synergy" is one thing, this is a whole other ball o' wax.
--
OliverWillis.Com [oliverwillis.com]

Corporate justification of mistrust..

[fanatic]

The last sentecne says it all:

RSS partisanship aside, this episode strikes yet another blow against the use of centralized (specifically copyright) DTDs in an increasingly distributed computing environment.

Publicly used DTDs need to be somewhere where the public can count on them long term.

Or else we need a DTD caching mechanism with an inifinite TTL - and this *still* doesn't address the copyright issue.

--

Actually, that was 3 days ago...

[BierGuzzl]

It's bugged the hell out of me. In the meantime, there's still my.userland.com, xmltree, and weblogs.com to name a few sites that still make wide use of the RSS 0.91

RSS 0.92 and onward

[BierGuzzl]

If you're looking for the already implemented RSS 0.92 [userland.com] look here There's also a reference to RSS 0.93 on which development started on April 01,2001.

Re:Mozilla & My Netscape?

[Broadcatch]

Ya, on Linux (debian woody w/ kernel 2.4.4) my.netscape works with Communicator 4.76 but not Mozilla 0.8.1 or any recent nightly build (well, it blinks the display a lot and finally displays the channels spread horizontally across the window). On Win2K, it seems to work fine with IE and Communicator (haven't downloaded Mozilla to Windoze yet)...

--

Re: Boxen

[doctorfaustus]

It's perfectly logical-- ox, oxen. box, boxen. What language do you speak? It's an irregular English plural...

Re: Best Alternative

[doctorfaustus]

Well, OK--here's my portal for geeks. Right now we're running 108 sets of geek headlines (you choose which ones you want to see), and other features, such as an anonymous surfing module, google's all-the-bells-and-whistles searches, and more. It's called DAILY ROTATION [dailyrotation.com]

It's all about the user agent

[Gandalf_007]

That is very true. It looks fine in Netscape 4.76 and MSIE 5, but it's all one wide column in in Mozilla. Using Opera [opera.com], I get varying results, depending on what "Identify As..." setting I use. Opera has the nice feature that I can set the "User Agent" string it sends to the server to be Opera, Mozilla 5.0 (which is what Mozilla / Netscape 6 sends), Mozilla 4.76 (aka Netscape 4.76), Mozilla 3.0, and MSIE 5.0.

When set to "Opera" or "Mozilla 3.0", the My Netscape page doesn't load at all, displaying an "invalid browser" page, saying you must use NS 4.x or IE 5.x. (Apparently they think NS 6 sucks too). Setting the User Agent to "Mozilla 5.0" or "Mozilla 4.76" (strange, since the real NS 4.76 works) result in the same one-columned-stretched layout as Mozilla. However, when Opera is emulating MSIE 5.0, it works perfectly!

So apparently, it's not that the page couldn't display in Mozilla, it's that My Netscape intentionally screws up the page for Mozilla!!

I swear ...

[legLess]

... that damn green lizard looks more sinister all the time.

question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes

What the hell?

[elegant7x]

Ok, While this post was well written, it was almost entirely meaningless. First of all, Netscape only removed a DTD. If you use a non-validating XML parser, your fine. Their XML is still well-formed (parsable), just not valid. But that's another issue...

Secondly, since when are Developers netscape's customers? The people who use my.netscape, for the most part, are not going to be coders. If you think they are you're seriously overestimating the number of programmers out there.

But it sure doesn't seem like anyone over there is listening to the customer. You know, those guys that are supposed to be, in some way, paying the salaries over there?

Yeh, right. I seriously doubt that you've ever put a penny into netscape.

Rate me [picture-rate.com] on picture-rate.com

For those who don't know: What is RSS?

[jcapell]

There is no consensus on what RSS stands for, so it's not an acronym, it's a name. Later versions of this spec may say it's an acronym, and hopefully this won't break too many applications. RSS is dialect of XML. All RSS files must conform to the XML 1.0 specification, as published on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website. At the top level, a RSS document is a element, with a mandatory attribute called version, that specifies the version of RSS that the document conforms to.

Re:For those who don't know: What is RSS?

[jcapell]

Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91) is lightweight syndication format for distributing news headlines on the web. It is a format that originated at Netscape for syndication of content through Netscape Netcenter. The format was also influenced by the the Channel Definition Format, which Microsoft defined and saw its window of opportunity open and close with "push" technologies. Userland.com built and hosted the first RSS aggregator outside of Netscape. Dave Winer of Userland formalized the Netscape specification as RSS 0.91.

Re:Hmmm...

[Drone-X]

This really sucks. How about an open source version of my.netscape.com... like a my.mozilla.org...

You seem to miss the point. A brief explenation of the problem:

The article is about RSS files, which are files used mostly by news sites and blogs. They contain a summary of the most recent topics on a site. RSS files were used by my.netscape.com to monitor multiple sites on your MyNetscape page, also they are used in Evolution and the Nautilus has the ability in CVS (under a "News" sidebar IIRC).

The problem here is that the RSS format was written in XML and used a DTD (document type definition) that was stored on the Netscape servers. Whenever *someone* *somewhere* tries to parse a RSS file the Netscape server is queried for the file and the RSS file is validated against it. So now that Netscape removed the file people don't get to see the RSS summary but get an error instead.

What could be done is putting a copy of the file on an alternate location and changing all RSS files to match the new URI... well, this could be done if it weren't for the fact that Netscape copyrighted the RSS DTD... the only sollution left is to change to the updated RSS format which doesn't depend on Netscape.

Re:Opera Left in the Cold

[cameleon]

You can get in using Opera. Just let it identify as some browser that is supported (IE, for example).

Re:No, XML and parsers are broken as designed

[Fat Lenny]

If DTD's are anything like namespaces (and why shouldn't they be?), the URI is entirely symbolic -- you shouldn't expect to find anything at the location specified, at least according to my copy of XML in a Nutshell.

--

legacy... ecch...

[connorbd]

This is why dusty decks get dusty. You can't just throw them out.

I have this fantasy of becoming an IT director some day. Now I'd love to have all the old Windows servers schlepped out to the curb if I ever get this job, but that can't be done by fiat because you never know what's floating around that someone might actually need. Penguins are great, but try running some obscure custom VB3 app on WINE -- betcha it hurts...

This is why things like this should be openly available, IMHO...

/Brian

Re:You don't know much about XML.

[vsync64]

I'm not by any means an XML guru, but your comment prompted my curiosity and I decided to go through the XML Schema tutorial [w3.org]. I noticed the following line at the beginning of their first example:

<xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

Which would still seem to imply the need for an existing standards file.

--

Use WDDX for syndication.

[bruthasj]

Check out www.openwddx.org [openwddx.org] and move your data over to an open source alternative backed by the web giants, Macromedia/Allaire. Do the web a favor and don't support AOL.

For crying out loud!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hdcool]

It would be much better if Netscape quit these things and made a good browser first... These things can be very good, but until it hasn't a very good browser, it's dieing...one day after another. Stop working at these things, don't make heavy browsers with all high-tech stuff like mozilla was supposed to be, make a simple, good working browser. Thank you.

Re:Slashdot still on RDF 0.9

[eean]

I've noticed that the tab "Security News" isn't working (thought it could be for other reasons.)

Are any other frontpage tabs not working?

IE

[Fervent]

It's a good thing I'm using IE.

Well, actually, maybe not. Active channels bombed too.

Pooh Pooh to you.

[SomeOtherGuy]

Nothing like a good set of standards to keep everyone on their toes. Pooh Pooh to the netscape folks....And to the USB folks who make it harder and harder for me to find a good SCSI scanner for Linux --- pooh pooh to you to.

RSS 0.92 is compatible with RSS 0.91

[Alien54]

If you're looking for the already implemented RSS 0.92 look here [http://backend.userland.com/rss092 [userland.com]] There's also a reference to RSS 0.93 on which development started on April 01,2001.

This is merely Vital information.

As seen on the site:

How 0.92 relates to 0.91
RSS 0.92 is upward-compatible with RSS 0.91.
Every new feature of 0.92 is optional, meaning that a 0.91 file is also a valid 0.92 file.

Now if Netscrape would only document this better and let the rest of the world what is going on.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

Works fine in mozilla!

[HoaryCripple]

Hey, maybe i'm just special, but my.netscape.com displays great in a nightly from a yesterday. What build ID's are you guys using, if in case it was a mozilla problem? Or did my.netscape.com fix the site so that it works in mozilla now? Whatever the case may be, the nightly that i'm running is (almost) great.

--

Re:Mozilla & My Netscape?

[BlowCat]

"Mosaic descendents" means MSIE. I can easily imagine that MyNetscape was fitted to work with most popular browsers including MSIE. Unfortunately, it's not always possible to make every browser happy.

Re:Is there a simple solution?

[update()]

Here [kde.org], by the way, is an example where some silly issues got in the way of a well-meaning project, objections were raised in a courteous way and the situation was resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Fortunately it was all cleared up before the story made it to Slashdot [slashdot.org].

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

Is there a simple solution?

[update()]

I know it's customary here to fly into a frenzy over any perceived legal obstacle, without making any attempt to contact the people involved to see if there's a simple resolution.

But on the off chance that the 1000th time is going to be different, let me ask this -- has anyone considered just asking Netscape if they'll make the DTD public? The O'Reilly writer doesn't seem to have bothered.

As far as MyNetscape itself is concerned, good riddance as far as I care. They came up with the clever stratagem of blocking Mac IE users. (The notice that there are some unresolved problems with that browser has been there for over a year.) Good move, guys -- piss away all of your market share and then block IE users from the one thing you have left. I switched to Yahoo, with no regrets.

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

DTD, XSLT, CSS, JS should not be centralized

[kentsin]

All that efforts to build the network is to safe-guard against single-point failure.

The css give us of hope that user can provide personalize view over the author's.

But were did that goes?

Can the browser designed to keep local copy of dtd, xslt, css, js which the local user can customized and take priority. when the author release a newer version, the local user can make their own choice (accepting an patch, review and make manual upgrade | simple replace the local one with the new version | without upgrade).

Re:what does "zulu" time mean??

[skyhawker]

To amplify the previous answer. All time zones are given a letter designator. "Z" happens to be the one for GMT, or whatever the official designation for the baselind of UTC is. UTC means "coordinated universal time." The letters are probably for the French version of that phrase. The military/aviation phonetic alphabet uses the word "zulu" for the letter "Z." I found a description of all this here [greenwich2000.com].

The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.

Bugger!

[ahkitj]

Well, that's what we say around here.

I'd like to think Netscape just mucked this one up deleting the DTD, but I'm not so hopeful. It wasn't the latest DTD from anyone around, but at least it did work the basics, enough for almost any RSS-devouring site. :)

My my

[_N0EL]

When introduced in 1999, the "My" concept itself wasn't anything earth-shattering

What about those of us who use Perl [perl.com]?

Re:Hmmm...

[samrolken]

Thank you for correcting my error.

I thought that my.netscape.com was just refusing to do the rdf's from other places.

Thanks for the education.

Is Sidebar Better?

[baptiste]

I think RDF was a good setup for a while, but Mozilla's sidebar stuff seems better off. You can use good ol HTML, make the list look better than a Unnumbered List and even add a little color. DOne right, sidebar channels work very well and could easily be included where RDF files were before. The only problem is a lack of standards so YMMV depending on teh site whose content highlights you are trying to get.

I mean an RDF file was nothing more than a <UL> list that used a bizarre, tedious format. Yes, it WAS standardized so a valid RDF channel would generally be usable. But what if it's not? Its the source sites lose - you'll just remove it.

--

My.solution

[TheSHAD0W]

Being a type-A personality who charges off and gets to work without thinking things over, I immediately went and squatted on "dtdcache.org", intending to set up a donation-supported central repository for DTDs. This would solve problems caused by changing web structures and provide a permanent location for static XML specifications.

Of course, given an additional 30 seconds of mature reflection, I realized that XML.org [xml.org] would be the best host of such a repository, probably tied into their XML registry program [xml.org]. Ah well.

Re:Mozilla & My Netscape?

[Ayende Rahien]

Netscape 6 is based on Mozilla.
What you are saying that My Netscape is tailored to screw up it's own browser, right?
Damn, I knew it was no fun to develop to it, but is it *that* bad, that even netscape workers won't code to it?

Re:Mozilla & My Netscape?

[Ayende Rahien]

But appernatly it's looking better is MSIE than Netscape!

Re:RSS 0.92 is compatible with RSS 0.91

[daveuserland]

Thanks for the clear statement. I couldn't agree more. I wrote a bit about working together [userland.com] on Scripting News this morning before reading this thread. To the RDF guys, working together means not breaking all the developers who implemented 0.91 channels, regardless of how right you think you are.

Re:Customer Service Issue, too ...

[TikkaMassala]

Not everyone hates microsoft, mate.

hahaha

[nilstar]

They seem to want to alienate their AOL "IE slaves", because the page doesn't load all the time (though it does load sometimes) in IE 5.5 and it argues that IE 6.0 (beta) is not a real browser.

Customer Service Issue, too ...

[Scotch Game]

This really is a fairly big letdown.

Another point that could be made here is over real customer service and what Netscape obviously perceives, or perhaps more importantly does not perceive, as a customer.

After all, companies are companies and, grand schemes and noble ideals aside, they're in it for the money, no question. Interestingly it seems that just in the last twelve months or so the realization of marketplace pressures, revenue streams and real product distribution, etc., have become as important as they are in any industry. It's valuable to see how the companies that are surviving in the "e-" sector, which would include Netscape even as a progenitor of that sector, are adapting. In this case the question is, "How do we identify with our customer?"

In some sectors this is not taken for granted. The automobile industry spends, quite literally, millions on trying to identify the target for an automobile down to the clothes those people buy, where the buy them and how they like to wear them, along with a myriad of other details. Sometimes, however, (to make a leap) it seems as though software companies that cater to developers occasionally just assume that since they've got developers on staff then, well, they intuitively understand their customers by a proxy of self-identity -- not always, perhaps, but seemingly more often than, say, oh lawnmower manufacturers.

It's an unfortunate truth, however, that it's easiest to hold contempt for your own kind. Someone can go through their whole day being nice to strangers, only to reserve frustration and bottled up whatever for the lucky family suffering at home with them. The same, it seems, held true for Netscape.

Marketing shmarketing. Customer shmustomer. RSS? They don't need their stinkin' RSS! Pull it! Screw 'em! Or maybe it was just a more gradual ah-who-even-cares decline. Who knows. Maybe they have some grand plan in store, something that will make up for what in any other industry would really be perceived as a Microsoft-scaled blunder. But it sure doesn't seem like anyone over there is listening to the customer. You know, those guys that are supposed to be, in some way, paying the salaries over there?

Of course things like this happen in other companies and to other customer bases, usually right before that company truly begins to flirt with really large and impressive failures. And judging from Netscape's track record of listening -- how many years went by waiting for Netscape 6 while Microsoft slowly crept upon the unsuspecting town and preyed on the needs of the poor townfolk? -- this is just another step in the wrong direction.

Interesting move, Netscape. People hate Microsoft with a passion. But people are just starting to look at you with, well, *yawn* ...

Slashdot still on RDF 0.9

[NutscrapeSucks]

Not RSS 0.9.1: http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf

This made building a homerolled parser a little annoying.

(BTW, RSS doesn't suck. Or it wouldn't if more big name news sites were using it.)

Re:Hmmm...

[NutscrapeSucks]

There is an open source version in the Mozilla sidebar.

If you want something with more of a my.netscape feel, you can build your own version using a XML parser fairly easily. Or look around, I'm sure someone has done it already. There's nothing "closed source" about a documented data format, btw.

Re:Slashdot still on RDF 0.9

[NutscrapeSucks]

Anyone using a validating XML parser on the source side and the default DTD netscape.com URL would be down.

Re:Great!

[VampireByte]

What the fuck is a RDF channel?

See this [w3.org] for info on Resource Description Framework... with XML becoming so huge, we are going to have so many new acronyms, huh?

Re:Hmmm...

[a.tomaka]

Definitely agreed. my.netscape.com never really appealed to me, but if there were an open source portal that were similiar I would definitely be all over it.
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