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by eric_the_read
3327 days ago
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A few thoughts on the spec itself: * In all cases (feed and items), the author field should be an array to allow for feeds with more than one author (for instance, a podcast might want to use this field for each of its hosts, or possibly even guests). * external_url should probably be an array, too, in case you want to refer to multiple external resources about a specific topic, or in the case of a linkblog or podcast that discusses multiple topics, it could link to each subtopic. * It might be nice if an item's ID could be enforced to a specific format, even if perhaps only within a single feed. Otherwise it's hard to know how to interpret posts with IDs like "potato", 1, null, "http://cheez.burger/arghlebarghle" |
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I'm going to pretend this is about music artists in a music library, but the logic is exactly the same for podcast hosts:
You tend to want fields like this to be singular, so that the field can be used in collation (i.e. "sort by artist.")
If you have multiple artists for a track, usually one can be designated the "primary" artist—the one that people best know, and would expect to find the track listed under when looking through their library. Usually, then, the rest get tacked on in the field in a freeform, maybe comma-and-space delimited fashion. The field isn't a strict strongly-typed references(Person) field, after all; it's just freeform text describing the authorship.
But as for hosts vs. guests, that's a whole can of worms. Look at the ID3 standard. Even though music library-management programs usually just surface an "Artist" field, you've actually got all of these separate (optional) fields embedded in each track:
• TCOM: Composer
• TEXT: Lyricist/Text writer
• TPE1: Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)
• WOAR: Official artist/performer webpage
• TPE2: Band/orchestra/accompaniment
• TPE3: Conductor/performer refinement
• TPE4: Interpreted, remixed, or otherwise modified by
• TENC: Encoded by
• WOAS: Official audio source webpage
• TCOP: Copyright message
• WPUB: Publishers official webpage
• TRSN: Internet radio station name
• TRSO: Internet radio station owner
• WORS: Official internet radio station homepage
That gives you separate credits for pretty much the entire composition, production and distribution flow, which usually means that each field only needs one entry.
Would be great if people used them, wouldn't it? Maybe the semi-standard "A feat. B (C remix)" microformat could be parsed into "[TPE2] feat. [TPE1] ([TPE4])"...