RSS vs Atom Formats

If you're a recent convert to RSS Feeds, you may be wondering what the difference is in all the formats: RSS 0.91, RSS 0.92, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom. The simple explanation is that when Dave Winer first developed his scripting news format, he outgrew it. From that format came a sequence of RSS formats, all of which are in XML. The RSS 1.0 version is in the RDF (Resource Description Framework) dialect of XML and is not a successor to RSS 0.92. RSS 1.0 was developed by another group. RSS 2.0 is the current version, at the time of this writing. It is supposedly the final version of RSS, as the specification is marked as frozen (RSS 2.0 Specification: Roadmap). While RSS 2.0 takes care of some of the shortcomings of earlier versions, there are other features it cannot handle. One format that is being touted as the successor to RSS is Atom. Atom has a specifications committee and is a work-in-progress. While it is not exactly the same as RSS, the general features are functionally the same.

For more information about Atom and the similarities and differences between Atom and RSS 2.0, please see What is Atom? and RSS 2.0 and Atom Compared. (Note: The majority of posts here will focus on RSS 2.0, at least initially.)

(c) Copyright 2005, Raj Kumar Dash, http://rssdeveloper.blogspot.com