Note that I'm not involved in either of the projects, I do have a preference and I'm just writing down my current feelings about the subject.
Although the Atom specification isn't finalized yet it is already widely used and implemented. I would think that is a success, especially now Google is involved (just a bit) using the Atom API for Blogger and providing free Atom feeds for Blogger users (I heard they also propose new things for future versions of the specification). From what I have heard, we can compare RSS with the browser wars, specifications being completely incompatible, it isn't semantic (a bit strange for an XML specification) and the purpose isn't really clear. On IRC, I heard from Mark Pilgrim some of the possibilities Atom has (he was talking about a link log plugin for WordPress).
Atom is about semantics, just like (correct) HTML is and that is nice. Although the current specification doesn't include everything one would wish (ok, I wish) Mark told me that future specifications, like 0.4, may address these changes wishes (he seemed to like the proposal).
The main problem of Atom is that people think of it as just another syndication format, which it is not. It has really a lot of possibilities, like Mark showed us recently when he mixed namespaces in order to provide something visual to the user, who otherwise might be confused by the raw XML.
O and using XHTML for syndication isn't bad because it is styleable, but because it is meant for documents.
This post has been heavily modified and yes, it now looks like I'm a Pilgrim fan-boy :-)
You say that like it's a bad thing! :)
Nothing wrong with you Mark, but don't you think you are referred to a little often? ;)
The main problem of Atom is that people think of it as just another syndication format, which it is not. It has really a lot of possibilities, like Mark showed us recently when he mixed namespaces in order to provide something visual to the user, who otherwise might be confused by the raw XML.
*cough*link please*cough*
Btw Anne, I really think your reply system makes easy things too complicated, no matter what the audience is.
A few extra notes...
format you seem to like in the future. :PMy quote
I just wonder, wasn't this possible with RSS? Not that I prefer RSS over Atom (actually not, it just happens that Opera supports RSS), but you make it sound as if this could only be done with Atom. I prefer CSS myself as I have applied already on my RSS feed and will apply soon on my Atom feed (which currently links to a non-existant stylesheet). I just need to write it.
[...] pecification), to match the one Mark Pilgrim has, since after all, I’m just a simple Pilgrim fan-boy and simple fan-boys follow leaders (yeah, just [...]
It seems to me that Atom is trying to address the same issues that RSS 1.0 attempted to address. At first, Atom was avoiding the problems of RSS 1.0, the complexity. But, of late, I'm thinking otherwise.
I find it weird that your comment system requires an understanding of HTML
My weblog is about HTML and more generally, Markup & Style, so it might not be that weird.
Atom doesn't avoid complexity, it avoids making a specification that doesn't make sense by specifying things in a way that makes sense and is clear.
Personally, I like Atom since it is more semantic and not tag-soup RSS like. Dave Winer said one could use the SOURCE element is an equivalent of rel=via, where it was specced that SOURCE should point to a RSS feed...