Content Syndication with RSS

Name

mod_annotation

Synopsis

mod_annotation is the smallest module. It consists of one element, which refers to a URL where a discussion of the item is being held. It might point to a discussion group, a commenting service, Usenet, an Annotea service, etc.

For sites that host such discussions, the addition of this module into the RSS feed should be simple and worthwhile. Weblogs, for example, might only need to point the element to the URL of the main entry page for a particular item.

If you want to parse this module into HTML, you should, as with many of these modules, have no problems simply assigning a separate div or span for the contents of the element, wrapping it within an <a href="URL">, and formatting it as you wish. This would probably only make sense if your parser is also taking notice of either the description element or the data provided by mod_content, simply because it is hard to have a discussion based solely on a headline.

Namespace

mod_annotation is identified by the namespace prefix annotate: and the URI http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/annotate/. Hence, the root element looks like this:

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
         xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/"
         xmlns:annotate="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/annotate/"
>

Element

There’s only one element, a subelement of item , and here it is:

<annotate:reference rdf:resource="URL" />

The URL points to a discussion on the item.

However, this element can also take subelements of its own from the ...