Rather than brave the turbulent waters of altering the RSS specifications or try to change the direction of the emerging Atom specification, either of which is likely to be an exercise in futility, and perhaps not even desirable, I'm considering coming up with yet another content syndication specification. Foolhardy? Maybe. Will any tools support it? Mine will. If nothing else, it will give me an avenue for giving my ideas concrete expression. Once they're solidified, they may be more ripe for inclusion in or adaptation to the other standards.

Is there room in the world for another standard? Can multiple standards coexist? I see no reason why not. As long as the necessary data is available for constructing whichever types of feeds a particular person wants to publish, there would be little difficulty in publishing in multiple formats simultaneously. Supporting multiple APIs would be more complex, but as long as API support is optional and granular, there would be no significant barrier to entry into supporting multiple formats.

First, I suppose I should come up with a "mission statement" for the new format. Clearly specified goals should help maintain focus and provide a standard by which to make decisions between mutually exclusive options for how to do things. I'll try to come up with something clear, concise and complete later. For now, the ideas that will go into it include:

* A major guiding principle that will affect all design decisions will be the goal of minimizing bandwidth requirements.
* Simplicity of implementation will also be a major consideration.
* The flexibility to use the format/API for many kinds of content will be important, but where the marginal value of adding new features seems minimal, and is peripheral to the main goals for the specification, additions that require non-trivial complexity will be relegated to extensions.
* The specifications for the format, and APIs for subscribing, publishing, etc., will each run on separate tracks, but will be coordinated to remain as consistent as possible.

Wish me luck!