[ Version 0.2 » 9/3/2002 11:26AM ]

Optional <channel> sub-elements

<managingEditor> -- The email address of the managing editor of the channel, the person to contact for editorial inquiries. The suggested format for email addresses in un-typed RSS elements is: [email protected].

<webMaster> -- The email address of the webmaster for the channel, the person to contact if there are technical problems.

The <managingEditor> and <webMaster> sub-elements may have an optional attribute named "type" indicating how the reader should interpret the specified email address. If the type is "text/plain" the reader should display the specified value as straight text. If the type is "text/html" the reader should display the specified value as HTML. A desktop browser-based news aggregator may choose to only display items whose type is text/html or text/plain. The "type" attribute can be use to prevent spammers from collecting email addresses directly from RSS feeds. Some examples:

    <!-- Cloaked email address -->
    <webMaster type="text/plain">
        erik at thauvin dot net
    </webMaster>     <!-- GIF-based email address -->
    <webMaster type="text/html">
        &lt;img src="http://host/email.gif"&gt;
    </webMaster>     <!-- HTML contact form -->
    <webMaster type="text/html">
        &lt;a href="http://host/contact.html"&gt;contact me&lt;/a&gt;
    </webMaster>     <!-- LDAP record pointer -->
    <webMaster type="text/html">
        &lt;a href="ldap://host/o=abc??sub?(cn=John Doe)"&gt;John Doe&lt;/a&gt;
    </webMaster>

<base> -- is the absolute URI of the current channel. Similarly to the <base> tag used in HTML document headers, RSS aggregators will use the channel's base location to properly handle all relative links. For example:

    <channel>
        …
        <base>http://some.host.com/path/</base>
        …
        <item>
            …
            <link>2002/08/27</link>
            …
        </item>
    </channel>

would be automatically interpreted as a pointer to:

    http://some.host.com/path/2002/08/27

Optional <item> sub-elements

<comments> -- is the URL pointing to the location of the readers' comments associated with the current item.

<pubDate> -- is the RFC 2822 formatted date or date-time the current item was published on. Some examples:

    <pubDate>Sun, 19 May 2002 15:21:36 GMT</pubDate>
    <pubDate>19 May 2002</pubDate>

If the publication date is in the future, aggregators may choose to not display the current item until that date.

<modDate> -- is the RFC 2822 formatted date-time the current item was last modified on. For example:

    <modDate>Sun, 19 May 2002 15:21:36 GMT</modDate>

RSS aggreators may choose to not display items with modification dates which fall under a certain interval since the last modification.