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Saturday, March 16, 2002

The 2 faces of RSS syndication
The more I think about it, the more obvious it appears to me that there are 2 distinct sides to the brevity in rss syndication question.
When I wear my (newly acquired) weblog publisher's hat, I wish I had even more control on the way the content of my blog is published for syndication.
I can already add several items to my post: a title, a link, an enclosure, and one or several categories. All these items are rendered in the xml file using the 0.92 rss specification, with matching <description>, <title>, <link>, <category> and <enclosure> tags.
When posting with Radio, all these elements are accessible from the input form of the local home page, provided the appropriate options are checked in the preferences.
There is even a clever new option for including a link to the post's permalink automatically when no link is entered in the input form.
What may be missing is another clever option to limit the length of text that is included in the <description> tag of the rss file. Of course, text would have to be clipped to the closest word boundary matching the maximum length specified in the option, to avoid disgraceful effects.
If the author of the post does not provide a link, the automatic permalink into <link> feature will point to the full HTML readable version.
If the author provides a different link, then the clipped description should automatically end with something like [more] embedded into an HTML link to the post's permalink ( a la Newsforge).
Ok, time to change hats. When I become an rss provided news reader, I'd like to control the way posts are presented to me in the aggregator.
If some of the feeds I subscribe to are prone to long messages, a nice feature would be to limit the amount of description listed in the aggregator's page for faster and better browsing.
A cool new option for Radio's aggregator, or maybe an alternate aggregator developed using the new drivers technology, would allow me to specify the maximum length of text rendered in HTML with each post. Of course, the above mentioned clipping rules should apply.
What happens if the author of the post provides a link that does not point to his original piece's permalink, or doesn't provide a link at all for that matter ?
I'm not too sure yet. Maybe the aggregator should include a [more] type link to the fully rendered version of the post on the local site, possibly in a different window (javascript anyone ?)
At least, if you've read through all of this message in a news aggregator, you now see the case for a way to enforce brevity in the aggregated flow :-)

6:34:04 PM comments: Google It!

Drivers for Radio's XML aggregator
system.verbs.builtins.xml.rss changed on Sat, 16 Mar 2002 16:55:59 GMT: New release of the XML aggregator, for Frontier and Radio. Took care of decoding problem with apostrophes. New driver architecture, makes it possible for the aggregator to understand new XML formats without an update from UserLand. Docs are here. http [Radio.root Updates]
The docs this post is refering to can be found at http://radio.userland.com/discuss/msgReader$11975?mode=topic&y=2002&m=3&d=16 (I think).
This is a really cool feature. It opens up Radio's aggregator to new syndication formats, or to alternate formatting of existing formats, the first very clever answer to a current on-going issue with rss syndication, cf here, here, and here.
My guess is Rahul will be the first one to offer a driver with ellipsis in long descriptions.

1:10:57 PM comments: Google It!