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ATOM converter

An .atom file is an Atom feed: the IETF-standardised syndication format, structured as a feed element containing entries, each with a globally unique id, a title, a timestamp and either content or a link to it. It was designed to fix the ambiguities RSS had frozen in place.

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Drop ATOM files here

Batch files can each use a different output. Nothing uploads for local conversions.

Working inputs include camera RAW, browser-local audio/video, PDF, CBZ/CBR comics, office documents, ebooks, markup, 3D models, structured text, images, and archives.

Where ATOM comes from

Atom was created between 2003 and 2005 by people frustrated that RSS 2.0's freeze made its ambiguities permanent, and was published as RFC 4287 in 2005 with the Atom Publishing Protocol following in RFC 5023. It is technically the better specification and lost the popularity contest anyway — though it remains the native format of several large publishing systems, and GitHub still serves Atom for its activity feeds.

How ATOM works

  • Every entry requires a globally unique id, which removes RSS's ambiguity about what identifies an item.
  • Dates are RFC 3339, a strict ISO 8601 profile, so they parse unambiguously.
  • Content carries an explicit type attribute — text, html or xhtml — instead of leaving readers to guess.
  • The specification mandates atom:link with rel attributes, making self-reference and pagination well defined.
  • Namespaces are used natively rather than bolted on, so extensions compose cleanly.

When to use ATOM

  • Publishing a feed where content type and identity must be unambiguous
  • Feeds consumed by software that needs strict date parsing
  • GitHub and similar activity streams
  • Converting between syndication formats during a migration

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • A real IETF standard with the ambiguities resolved rather than frozen in
  • Unambiguous dates and explicit content typing
  • Namespace-native design that extends without conflict

Limitations

  • Less widely supported than RSS despite being the better specification
  • More verbose for the same information
  • Its required elements make a minimal valid feed larger than RSS's

Compatibility

Read by essentially every feed reader alongside RSS, and produced natively by GitHub, Blogger and several static site generators. Podcast clients generally expect RSS instead. Novus Convert parses it locally and converts to RSS and JSON Feed.

Feed and entry fields — id, title, updated timestamp, link and summary — are preserved. Typed content markup and namespaced extensions are not carried into simpler targets.

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