Well, that didn't take long. Blogger have decided that Atom is the One True Syndication Format. Not just for the syndication nerds who have hacked support in alongside existing RSS feeds, but as the preferred (only?) syndication format for one of the largest blogging services1. Suddenly there is real demand for syndication aggregators to support the format for real.
Before it's finished. The point of Atom was supposed to be a tightly-defined format, in contrast with the annoyingly loose RSS specification. But it's not there yet, and it seems to run entirely counter to this goal to start using the damn thing in the wild already. The current Atom spec is version 0.3, and full of wonderfully precise specifications like "[[explain inheritence]]", "[[what is it for?]]" and the incredibly informative "[[ ... ]]".
Wonderful. And if the spec changes significantly between 0.3 and 1.0, we'll end up with 0.3 data continuing to exist in the wild (data, once on the Internet, never dies), bringing us in effect another syndication format to add to the list...
1 As far as I could see, RSS is a "pro" feature on Blogger, but I have this vague and possibly inaccurate memory that all the pro features were folded into the free offering. So maybe its not that bad?
Keep in mind that Blogger keeps its RSS & Atom templates on their central servers, not as editable templates that the user can futz with. When Blogger updates their RSS or Atom templates to meet a new specification, every blog they serve is updated automatically. By the way, syndication is now part of the non-Pro Blogger, and users can choose either RSS or Atom when they activate it in their preferences, and they can switch formats if they like.
I noticed a few weeks back that Mark Pilgrim's RSS feed contained text along the lines of "This feed is deprecated... use Atom" against each post.
I'm glad he stopped doing that: as you say, Atom is NOT a done deal!
Brian, I have a Blogger blog and see no method on the preferences page of switching between atom and rss. Indeed only Atom is even mentioned on that page as a form of syndication feed.