4 ms·

> It would have been better to be able to first check if new data is available. That... is what conditional requests do...

• mdp2021 2y ago
  Which means: do not place extra mechanisms in the RSS when you can do the same with HTTP. But then there is the problem of RSS clients that may not work properly (may not use that trick), without the user knowing it, and that of RSS servers that do not work correctly with "If-Modified-Since" (as noted in a nearby post). Edit: but if the burden were placed on RSS instead, we could have had the trick of "I already have ...#10050, #10051 and #10052: just send me from #10053 on" - the feeds XML that is updated recently will contain more items than just the new ones. Similarly for the gaps: "the XML would contain from #10050 on, but there had been a surge of publications and now I am missing #10045 to #10049..."
  • notpushkin 2y ago
    > but if the burden were placed on RSS instead That would be nice to have, but it's less realistic. Some clients already speak proper HTTP, and others can too, with little modification. For modified RSS like this, you have to make a standard first, then push both servers and clients to use it.
    • masklinn 2y ago
      It also requires a "smart" server, whereas you can serve your atom or rss feed statically with a standard HTTP server handling caching and conditional requests essentially free.
      • notpushkin 2y ago
        Yeah, although dumb servers could just return last N posts as usual. It's one more case to handle on the client, though. (The alternative is breaking compatibility with older feeds, which is way worse IMO.)