RSSAtom

RSSAtom is a proposed or experimental syndication format intended to blend the features of RSS and Atom feeds into a single interoperable standard. The goal is to provide the simplicity of RSS 2.0 with the richer metadata and extensibility of Atom 1.0, reducing fragmentation between feed producers and consumers.

Design and scope: RSSAtom aims to define a core feed document that can be interpreted by readers as either an RSS 2.0 or an Atom 1.0 feed, or by a specialized parser that understands a unified model. It emphasizes stable core fields: title, link, description or content, and timestamps; it supports authors, categories, and attachments, and introduces an extensibility mechanism to convey custom metadata via namespaces or modules.

Structure: In practice, RSSAtom may use a hybrid or dual-mode payload, where elements map to both RSS and Atom semantics; for example an item may contain id, updated, and content/description, while also exposing enclosure-like attachments and category tagging; a mapping layer can translate an RSSAtom document into native RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0 forms for legacy tooling.

Status and usage: RSSAtom remains speculative and is not recognized as an official standard by major standards bodies. It appears in experimental projects and discussions about interoperability but faces challenges in tooling, caching behavior, and differing expectations among existing RSS and Atom ecosystems.

See also: RSS, Atom, syndication, feed reader, content distribution.