iTunes Spec & FeedValidator Update

FeedValidator has been updated for the latest iTunes spec. See this post for a few interesting things of note about that spec by Sam Ruby and Mark Pilgrim.

An important point is that thanks to omissions in the new spec, you need to have the old spec if you want to have all the information and it’s no longer available on Apple’s site. For example, it doesn’t have the list of categories and subcategories, or mention the tag in the summary table at the top.

In addition to the comments there, it’s struck me that the description of the tag itself implies that it should only be applied at the channel level and not to individual items. This would make sense since iTunes doesn’t do anything with an image specific to a particular show/item, only the podcast/channel as a whole, but do we know for sure? Er, no.

This new revision is much better, but that wouldn’t be difficult, and yet it seems that where the first version did well this one has let itself down and vice versa. It remains a moving target for anyone trying to make sense of it all.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 at 9:47 pm by Steve Harris and is filed under iTunes, Podcasting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “iTunes Spec & FeedValidator Update”

  1. Nathan Says:
    July 21st, 2005 at 3:13 am

    Hey Steve. Love Feeder. I have a stumbling block though. My feed repeatedly fails to validate citing no email address for the various items. Thing is I do have the mail address entered in. Under the Publisher Tab. What gives?

  2. Steve Harris Says:
    July 21st, 2005 at 3:34 pm

    I’m dealing with this by email – it’s best for support to get in touch as detailed on the support pages: http://reinventedsoftware.com/support/ – that way I can keep track of everything.

    For everyone else’s benefit:

    To comply with the RSS spec (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss) at the feed level (fields shown in Feeder’s Info Drawer) both Webmaster and Managing Editor require email addresses. With each individual item in the feed, it’s the Author field that requires an email address.

    The error message will make it clear whether this is the Webmaster, Managing Editor or an individual item’s Author field.

    You can also enter a name in parentheses after like this:
    name@domain.com (A. N. Other)