Assumptions This Book Makes

The technology used in this book is not all that hard to understand, and the concepts specific to RSS and Atom are fully explained. The book assumes some familiarity with HTML and, specifically, XML and its processing techniques, although you will be reminded of important technical points and given places to look for further information. (Appendix A provides a brief introduction to XML if you need one.)

Most of the code in this book is written in Perl, but the examples are commented sufficiently to make things clear and easily portable. There are also some examples in PHP and Ruby. However, users of any language will get a lot from this book: the explanations of the standards and the uses of RSS and Atom are language-agnostic.