RSS 3 Terminology Page

Welcome to the RSS 3 Terminology Page. In this page the terminology common to all the specifications on this site is detailed.

The terminology described in this page is normative to the RSS 3 Lite, RSS 3 Full, RRDL and RCDL specifications. It is divided to categories according to the nature of the application of the terms.

Terminology

Specification Related Terms

This section describes terms used to interpret the specification themselves.

1. The term "normative" describes sections (or comments/notes) which describes behaviors and feature to which implementors must adhere
2. The term "informative" describes sections (or comments/notes) which give certain details for further knowledge and do not describe behavior to which implementors must adhere
3. The term "non-normative" describes sections (or comments/notes) which describe behaviors or features of recommendation nature or changing nature
4. The words "must", "must not", "required", "shall", "shall not", "should", "should not", "recommended", "may", "may not" and "optional" are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119

General RSS Format Terms

This section describes terms used to describe features or behaviors which together consist the RSS format.

1. "Metadata" is succinct verbal or graphical information about a certain abstract or concrete notion (i.e. for news item, metadata would be "title", "link", "description" etc.)
2. A "feature" in RSS is expressed by either an independent element conveying some functionality or an attribute of an existing element conveying some functionality, for example, the element and the "url" attribute on that element are both features
3. An "RSS Feed" is a single feed, in an independent file or produced from a generator, complying with any formal RSS specification
4. An "RSS Channel" is a unique channel within the RSS feed; notice that only RSS 3 Full allows multiple channels
5. A "Lite-type" feed, element, attribute or feature is one which is available in the RSS 3 Lite specification, while a "Lite-type" processor or aggregator is one which is solely compliant with the RSS 3 Lite specification
6. A "Full-type" feed, element, attribute or feature is one solely found in the RSS 3 Full specifications, while a "Full-type" processor or aggregator is one which supports most or all of the RSS 3 Full features
7. When a specification refers to the "current RSS-type" it refers to the RSS Version 3 specification described in that document, namely RSS 3 Lite and RSS 3 Full
8. A "destination" in RSS refers to the web page, application or service to which a URL is referring; Thus an "item's destination" is the page to which the element points, an "enclosure's destination" is the file to which the "url" attribute on the element points and so on

Application Terminology

This section describes terms used to refer to applications or programs as represented by their designers.

1. "Implementors" refer to those who "implement" a given format, thereby giving their application the ability to process the discussed format; This term is used mostly in behavioral descriptions
2. An "Aggregator" is the end-user program, script or website which processes the RSS feed into a human-readable form
3. A "low-end aggregator" is end-user program, script or website which processes only a select set of features of the RSS 3 Standard, i.e. RSS 3 Lite
4. A "high-end aggregator" is end-user program, script or website which process most or all of the features described in the complete RSS 3 Standard, i.e. RSS 3 Full
5. A "processor" is the form of engine, within a software or a site (or any form of aggregator) which parses the RSS feed and transforms it into human-readable form
6. A "full-featured" processor or aggregator is one which is able to "understand" all features available in the RSS Version 3 standard (not necessarily including RRDL and RCDL)
7. A "client" is the user who uses an aggregator to read the RSS feed

General XML and Mark-up Terms

1. An "element" is a single word within the symbols < and >, conveying at least one semantic notion (i.e. the element depicts a broadcast item) - at times this is referred to as "tag"; notice that "closing tags" are those of the form in which a slash symbol precedes the actual name of the tag, for example: ; otherwise notice that tags which do not require a closing tag (due to not having sub-elements and/or not having any content) must have a slash symbol before the > symbol, i.e.
2. An "attribute" is a word which appears after the element word (for example, "item" in ) and before the end symbol, >. It must contain some kind of content referred to after a = sign and within quotation marks (for example, isEmpty="true">)
3. A "sub-element" (or "child") is an element which appear at some position between another element opening tag and closing tag (i.e. the