[whatwg] Graceful Degradation andMime Types[was: trailing slash]

[Mike Schinkel]

Martin Atkins write:
>> >
>> > All really sucessful text formats have been easy to 
>> > edit (why did RSS  take off while RDF is still 
>> > struggling to get off the ground?)
>> 
>> I don't necessarily disagree with your sentiment, but 
>> it could be argued that RSS has done well while RDF 
>> has floundered largely because RSS solves a real-world 
>> problem (how to get news/weblog content into 
>> aggregators) while RDF solves a purely theoretical 
>> problem that less people have a pressing need to solve 
>> (A generic representation of  relationships between 
>> resources).

Though I do agree with your points, my comment referred to the fact RSS 1.0
was based on RDF and RSS 2.0 was not, as Karl Dubot pointed out.  RSS 2.0
has gained tremendous market adoption with RSS 1.0 much less so.  I believer
that has been because implementing RSS 1.0 really only requires one to
understand well-formedness whereas RSS 1.0 places more educational demands
on the author (it's similar to the argument favoring HTML over XHTML.)  

Simplicity really is the killer app.

-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/