With the recent unveiling of the Blogger 2 API there has been a great deal of discussion regarding its shortcomings and best route going forward.
Ben Trott summarizes the issues in his company's newly unveiled Six Log. Ben writes "in the case of Movable Type, our interest in this matter is in hoping that tools originally built for the Blogger API can be also used for MT-powered blogs without the loss in functionality that currently exists." In a later post, Ben notes Steve Jenson who is leading the Blogger 2 API effort, addressed his issues and comments further.
Elsewhere Sam Ruby says "Sigh. It looks like the future of blogging clients and servers is to have more code in if/switch/case statements and configuration options than actual logic. What's worse is a future where - despite all the interfaces being "open" - the only real guarantee you will have is that vendor A's clients will work with vendor A's servers. That's called vendor lock-in." Sam points back to his comments when the MetaWeblog APIs was being developed.
It seems if ever there was a tool/medium that needed a RESTful API it's weblogging.
As I noted recently, Joe Gregorio has been developing a prototype with such an API. Using Ben's comments as to the shortcomings of the Blogger API for MovableType, Joe explains how a RESTful approach is better suited for the task.
Joe and I have been continuing to discuss the notion in private emails. Rather then debate amongst ourselves, Joe and I opened a mailing list for a community discussion of web service interfaces using REST for enabling collaborative authoring and content tools. Some examples of existing initiatives that would be an appropriate topic for discussion include (but are not limited to) RESTLog, Extremely Simple Syndication (XSS) format and TrackBack. All are welcome and encouraged to join the discussion.
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