I am really intrigued by the concept of Microformats. I love the idea of “presentable and parsable” formats.
I am a little disappointed, however, that there is not a microformat for describing feed subscriptions. The de facto standard for subscription lists is OPML. I am not sure how this happened but it does not seem particularly well suited for this task. I think a microformat could work much better. After all, I use my subscription list for just two thing, my blogroll (needs to be presentable) and as the subscription list for my aggregator (needs to be parsable). It would be nice if they were the same and I did not have to keep the two synchronized.
I am thinking something like the following
<ul class="osl" >
<li class="subscription">
<a class="title" href="http://pezra.barelyenough.org/blog"
type="text/xhtml" rel="feed">Peter Williams' Weblog</a>
(<a href="http://pezra.barelyenough.org/blog/feed"
type="application/rss+xml" rel="feed">RSS 2.0</a>)
(<a href="http://pezra.barelyenough.org/blog/feed/atom"
type="application/atom+xml" rel="feed">Atom</a>)
</li>
<li class="subscription">
<a class="title" href="http://www.toolshed.com/blog/articles"
type="text/xhtml" rel="feed">/\ndy's Blog</a>
(<a href="http://www.toolshed.com/blog/xml/rss/feed.xml"
type="application/rss+xml" rel="feed">RSS 2.0</a>)
</li>
</ul>
That results in
REXML could not parse this XML/HTML:
<samp>
<ul class="osl">
<li class="subscription">
<a class="title" href="http://pezra.barelyenough.org/blog" type="text/xhtml" rel="feed">Peter Williams'; Weblog</a>
(<a href="http://pezra.barelyenough.org/blog/feed" type="application/rss+xml" rel="feed">RSS 2.0</a>)
(<a href="http://pezra.barelyenough.org/blog/feed/atom" type="application/atom+xml" rel="feed">Atom</a>)
</li>
</p>
(RSS 2.0)
REXML could not parse this XML/HTML: </ul>
REXML could not parse this XML/HTML: </samp>
I could style this up nicely for my blog and my aggregator could, directly, use my blogroll as it’s subscription list. Now that would be nice.