TL;DR: What developers need. Enough examples, a validator, and decent docs that value explaining over mathematical elegance. We assume developers can read and think, and if there's doubt look to the examples for guidance. #
It's worth noting we did not take the RSS.chat project to a standards body like the W3C or the IETF. I develop the software first, make sure I'm happy with it, then open it up for other developers to try out, either building something compatible (a reader) or competitive (a writing environment). Hopefully we won't find major problems, but if we do, there's still time to address them. #
I find that most standards that come out of the standards bodies aren't developed by implementors or with them in mind. They avoid trying to solve any specific problem, rather focusing on the elegance and flexibility of the format. This makes interop much less likely. #
I saw the differences several times as the web standards were growing up. The ones that were taken over by the W3C ended up missing the point. They could still be used, but they often did anti-interop things in their design. But if they get popular we will build on them anyway. A great example was XML-RPC vs SOAP. We didn't need another way to do RPC on the web, we already had a good one. We didn't need another syndication format, RSS was growing like a weed. We didn't need an alterative to rssCloud, but we got one anyway. #
It's as if they forgot that the internet and web were not build by big corporations, who were busy fighting over Windows vs Mac OS. Lotus vs Excel. The internet was built mostly by individuals at universities. The internet caught the tech industry by surprise. So it's no wonder the formats they built were anti-internet. Long story, the point is we're building stuff is mimimalist yet still does a lot of great things. And there won't be a lot of long mathematical sounding definitions, but there will be plenty of examples and a validator, the tools developers need to create interop. #
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)