I have finally released activeRenderer vs 1.4.

The new version packs 3 new features:

• activeRenderer now renders RSS format files (news feeds) in active outlined form,
• with activeRenderer installed in Radio, you can now visualize both OPML and RSS local or remote files in the new outline browser,
• activeRenderer's rendering engine is now accessible as a web service, via both a local URL and a public one at services.activeRenderer.com/activerenderer/render.

To access the outline browser after installing or updating to version 1.4, click on the activeRenderer link in the Status Center section of Radio's local Home page, or in Radio's Tools page.

You may type a remote (http://) or local (file://) URL to an RSS news feed or OPML outline, click browse, and display the result in the viewer pane.

If you have the mySubscriptions.opml option checked in your Radio preferences, you may click tnews to display a list of your currently subscribed RSS feeds in the right pane. Clicking a feed in the list will display its outlined content in the viewer pane.

Clicking outlines will list the content of your www/outlines folder in the right pane, in outlined form of course. Clicking an outline name will display the OPML file in the viewer pane.

There are several parameters to the rendering that you may modify by clicking settings, then save. For instance, checking create headers will modify the outlining of news posts so that a header node (the first sentence) is created for each post under the title node, the rest of the post being rendered as a child node of the header, recreating my favorite title/header/story hierarchy. More on parameters, and accessing the rendering engine later.

The outline browser is a simple browser. It is not a full featured outliner: no modifying or re-ordering the nodes. Neither is it a full news aggregator: no marking of previously read posts, no archiving of previous posts. Wouldn't be too difficult to create an aggregator from this interface though...