See Also[RSS 1.0 proposed mod_image] |
The RSS spec [specifies an optional <image> element] that can point to an image that describes the channel.
This has been around since [RSS 0.9]. You can see an example of its use on [Slashdot's RSS 0.9 feed]:
<image> <title>Slashdot</title> <url>http://images.slashdot.org/topics/topicslashdot.gif</url> <link>http://slashdot.org/</link> </image>
However, this doesn't say anything about the blog's author. So here's a proposal: extend the <image> element in a namespace to let people provide multiple images, each of which describes one specific thing. Keep using the existing <image> mechanism for channel images (so they show up in existing aggregators), and use extended <i:image> blocks for other images.
The idea here is to basically take the RSS <image> element spec, redefine it in a namespace, and add some more options. Either that or just add extra namespaced elements to <image>, but I'm not sure if that will work, as you are probably only allowed one <image> per <channel>.
<channel xmlns:i="http://purl.oclc.org/NET/rssimg/"> [... title, link, description, etc ...] <image> <!-- this is a 'standard RSS image' - describing the channel --> <width>42</width> <height>42</height> <url>url-of-broadband-mechanics-logo</url> <title>broadband mechanics logo</title> <link>url-of-marc's-blog</link> </image> <i:image> <!-- this is an 'extended image' - describing something else --> <i:describes>author</i:describes> <i:width>36</i:width> <i:height>36</i:height> <i:url>url-of-image-of-marc's-face</i:url> <i:title>a picture of marc</i:title> <i:link>url-of-marc's-blog</i:link> </i:image> [... items and stuff ...] </channel>
I like this way of representing it better, and it would be easier to write a parser for, but it's not very RSS-ish, and existing parsers already know how to parse <image> blocks, so this is probably not such a great idea.
<channel xmlns:i="http://purl.oclc.org/NET/rssimg/#compact"> [... title, link, description, etc ...] <i:image i:describes="channel" i:width="42" i:height="42" i:href="url-of-broadband-mechanics-logo" i:title="broadband mechanics logo" i:link="url-of-marc's-blog" /> <i:image i:describes="author" i:width="36" i:height="36" i:href="url-of-image-of-marc's-face" i:title="a picture of marc" i:link="url-of-marc's-blog" /> [... items and stuff ...] </channel>
(values of the i:describes element).