How XML Contributed To The Development Of RSS
When RSS was originally developed, it was defined as a lightweight - or simplified - subset of XML grammar. Even the RSS acronym's basis has changed since its inception in 1997. Formerly, it was known as Rich Site Summary, it is now commonly called Real Simple Syndication which more accurately - and less ambiguously - describes its purpose.
Initially, the purpose of RSS was to standardize describing a website's metadata. The format, whether by serendipity or intentional design, turned out to be an ideal way to feed data rapidly and effectively to any website with a mechanism to interpret the XML content. In time, RSS became a stand-alone entity, with its roots solidly planted in the XML Document Type Definition (DTD).
The DTD is a formal syntax and structure which defines the XML, thus RSS. The DTD can exist locally or be referenced by a pointer to an external DTD in the XML DOCTYPE declaration. This was somewhat of an impediment for early RSS constructs, as not all DTDs are necessarily compliant without agreement of a standard. This gave rise to the RSS validators which parse the tags, content and values, and ensures they are accurate and consistent.
While it is a stretch to say internet news syndication wouldn't exist if not for XML, RSS made the news feed accessible to anyone - either as a contributor or as a consumer - without the need for cost-prohibitive intermediate syndication subscription services.
XML was created as a subset of the Standard General Markup Language (SGML), which in turn was based on IBM Corporation's General Markup Language (GML). All of GML and most of SGML predated the blossoming of the internet, while XML was developed during the formative days of the modern internet in the late 1990s. XML and RSS were nearly concurrent since inception, with RSS being a more streamlined format particularly suited to dissemination of text-oriented item content.
XML, while originally intended as a document handling tool, could be easily manipulated to simply and effectively tag and contain any textual data. RSS was the necessary component to enable easy promulgation of the content in a consistent and predictable way. By using a validator to ensure tags and inadvertent content would be passed error-free to the parser, the XML file is sent to an aggregator with reasonable assurance that it would be passed successfully from the aggregator to a much larger audience.
A number of Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) exist that make publishing news - or similar data - validation, and submission to an aggregator a transparent process for the user. Once the GUI is set to match any platform specific constraints, the resulting RSS output is completely platform independent. This approach ensures websites and browsers are all capable of supporting a stand-alone RSS reader, a browser plug-in, or PDA app designed to connect to any number of aggregators and properly interpret and display the content.
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