Version: 0.1

Contact: Daniel Goldshlack and Paul Pritchard, mBLAST

Updated: Jun 16, 2008

1 Overview

The objective of mBLAST's White Paper Extensions is to define the extensions necessary to describe a white paper, that is, a white paper is a document that describes a product, a specific technology, a technology or business trend or other topic, usually to a fairly high level of technical detail. Companies generally use white papers to disseminate information that will assist potential purchasers in understanding complex issues that will help them make an informed buying decision. The extensions define attributes that are unique to white papers and are not contained in standard RSS or Atom feeds, such as keywords and publisher.

While mBLAST prefers ATOM feeds because of the ATOM standard's ability to support extensions, we can also accept the same extensions inside RSS feeds.

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4287.txt

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-atom10.html

1.1 Namespaces and Version

The XML namespace URI for the XML data format described in this specification is:

http://www.mblast.com/whitepapers/0.1

In this spec, the prefix "whitepaper:" is used for the namespace URI identified above. For example:

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
xmlns:whitepaper="http://www.mblast.com/whitepapers/0.1">

1.2 Notational Conventions

In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

All date/times values MUST conform to the "date-time" production in [RFC3339]. In addition, an uppercase "T" character MUST be used to separate date and time, and an uppercase "Z" character MUST be present in the absence of a numeric time zone offset.

2 Usage of standard ATOM elements

2.1 <atom:title> element

The title element should contain the title of the white paper.

2.2 <atom:author> element

The author element should contain the name of the company that created the white paper, and optionally the URI of the company.

2.3 <atom:summary> element

The summary element should contain a short synopsis or abstract of the white paper.

2.4 <atom:link> element

The link element should contain the URL of the white paper on the publisher's web site. The link element is optional.

2.5 <atom:published> element

The published element should contain the date the white paper was published.

3 Extensions

3.1 <whitepaper:publisher> element within <entry>

The whitepaper:publisher element contains information about the publisher of the white paper. This element allows white papers from different publishers to be included in the same feed.

3.1.1 <name> element within <whitepaper:publisher>

The name element contains the name of the publisher of the white paper.

3.1.2 <uri> element within <whitepaper:publisher>

The uri element contains the uniform resource locator for the main web page of the publisher.

3.2 <whitepaper:length> element within <entry>

The whitepaper:length element contains information about how long the white paper is - usually listed in number of pages.

3.3 <whitepaper:keywords> element within <entry>

The whitepaper:keywords element contains a list of keywords for the white paper. Keywords or tags associated with the white paper can be included in this element. The list of keywords should be separated with commas.

4 Example

Please use this example to understand the use of the white paper extensions.

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
  xmlns:whitepaperf="http://www.mblast.com/whitepapers/0.1"
  xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.computerworld.com">
  <id>http://www.computerworld.com/feeds/whitepapers.atom</id>
  <title>ComputerWorld White Papers Feed</title>
  <updated>2006-03-16T12:00:00Z</updated>
  <link rel="self" 
  href="http://www.computerworld.com/feeds/whitepapers.xml" />
  <link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml"
    href="http://www.computerworld.com/feeds/whitepapers.atom"/>
  <entry>
    <id>http://www.computerworld.com
	/story/0,10801,109577,00.html</id>
    <title>Microsoft tests ad network for Windows Live</title>
    <link href="http://www.computerworld.com
	/story/0,10801,109577,00.html" />
    <updated>2006-03-15T12:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Steven Schwankert</name>
    </author>
    <source>
      <name>Computerworld>/name>
      <uri>http://www.computerworld.com">/uri>
    </source>
    <summary>
      Microsoft Corp. has begun testing display 
	advertisements for Windows Live and its other 
	upcoming online services, the company said 
	Wednesday.
    </summary>
    <link href="http://www.computerworld.com
	/story/0,10801,109577,00.pdf" />
    <whitepaper:publisher>
      <name>Computerworld>/name>
      <uri>http://www.computerworld.com">/uri>
    </whitepaper:publisher>
    <whitepaper:keywords>able, baker</whitepaper:keywords>
  </entry>
</feed>

5 Licensing Information

mBLAST's copyrights in this specification are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (version 2.5). To view a copy of this license, please visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/. As to software implementations, mBLAST is not aware of any patent claims it owns or controls that would be necessarily infringed by a software implementation that conforms to the specification's extensions. If mBLAST later becomes aware of any such necessary patent claims, mBLAST also agrees to offer a royalty-free patent license on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions to any such patent claims for the purpose of publishing and consuming the extensions set out in the specification.