Ben Hammersely Has Half an Idea

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Ben Hammersley makes an interesting observation about how atom can be the pivot point for a number of tools to process blog content. Based on my last post, I have to say all the more power to him, and he should go further. Why not do something like make atom the output format for Movable Type and other blogging software?

In Movable Type for instance, no more creating multiple output templates, in essence, outputting the same information twice. Just dump it all in atom and then transform that according to your output needs using standard XSLT.

Likely, atom's content element would need to be changed, perhaps even an alternative namespace created, to allow for better defined semantics in the post content. One might also be required to have multiple output templates if application demands make that the most efficient or effective solution.

However, in some sense, these are all just details of getting toward a standardized data exchange format susceptible to easy machine processing. Just as html led to the rise of the web and the explosion of the Internet, this could lead to the explosion of the semantic web.

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Yup, that's the idea! See what Diego is doing with atomflow query and atomflow-templates. You have a store (in Atom), you make various slices of that (as Atom Feeds), and you transform for whatever output you want. Some blogging systems will look after that for you, helping you to install templates, etc, and there can be other standalone tools to do other tasks, eg email list updates.

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