I just changed DWiki to generate absolute URLs for the '(N comments)' links at the bottom of entries in my Atom syndication feeds, instead of the absolute path URLs it used to generate (URLs without the http://host/ portion) . This scrubs out the last non-absolute URLs in my syndication feed; URLs in the text of entries in the feed have always been absolute, because I'm cautious and cynical.

In theory absolute URLs are unnecessary in Atom entries, because Atom has rules for how to handle relative URLs. And if you believe that all feed readers properly implement those rules, I have a pony for you. In theory the programmers of the bad feed reader are bozos, because the Atom spec is clear; in practice, even with Atom people creating syndication feeds have a choice between purity and having your feed being widely read. Using only absolute links is one of the aspects of that choice.

(The difference between Atom and RSS in this is that who is the bozo is very clear.)

Back when I added syndication feeds to DWiki I made a choice to be pessimistic about feed readers getting relative URLs right all the time, and modified the DWikiText to HTML converter to generate absolute links for syndication feeds. The '(N comments)' link is generated separately, so I missed it; a problem report today validated my cynicism and pushed me to make this change.

(Depressingly, I believe the feed reader that had a problem was NetNewsWire 2.1; I had expected a bit better of it since it's well regarded.)

Other people feel differently, and deliberately stick to their guns in order to push the technology forward and so on. For example, Tim Bray uses fully relative URLs for the images in his feeds combined with XHTML and xml:base declarations (themselves relative to his feed's URL); the result is a nice test of proper XHTML and XML handling in feed readers. (Some fail, liferea included, but this encourages people to get them fixed.)