RDM

["Robert S. Thau" <rs...@ai.mit.edu>]

Netscape's spec for RDM (Resource Description Messages) has finally shown
up on the W3C web site, as a note (their drafts generally are available at
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/ --- this took a little longer than one might
like, but I think some of the delay may well have been w3c-internal).  The
specific URL for the current RDM draft is:

  http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/NOTE-rdm.html

The general intent of this is to allow a site to advertise a specific
table of contents, to direct robots in more specific ways than a
robots.txt file would allow, and to support queries of the form
"what's new on your site *generally* since [date]?", which would allow
indexing engines to do a full-spectrum update without subjecting sites
to a blizzard of if-modified-since requests (which are mostly
pointless --- but the indexer has no way to know in advance which ones
are pointless...).

It's also worth noting that this represents at least a step on their
part away from standardization-by-fiat.  FWIW, some Netscape folks are
actually interested in having us support it --- anyone care to have a
look?

rst