Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: RSS Feed Length and Image in Lars Blogger

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Posted by Jarkko Laine on
I don't know if I'm talking about the same thing, but something very similar has annoyed me a bit with the Lars Blogger RSS feed. Namely, it puts something like X first characters to the description tags and then "...". The whole entry is then in the content tag.

Now at least all the aggregators I've tested on OS X only show the description in their entry pane. This is to say the least annoying since one of the biggest reasons why I like newsreaders is that they automatically pull the entries I want and I can then read them offline e.g. when sitting in a train. Reading only the first line is not quite doing the job.

Of course this is actually fault of those newsreaders since they don't show the whole item (I don't know if they even parse the content tag). But as long as the situation is this, I would be very grateful if every blogger would put the whole entry inside the description tag. Of course it needs first be a package parameter.

This applies to RSS 1.0 of course, which we are using at the moment. If (and when) we are moving on to atom, this problem won't probably occur anymore.

For the sake of an example here's how Lessig blog (done with Movable Type) does the job (notice that the description is the same as content, only with less formatting and without encoding):


<item rdf:about="http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001709.shtml">
<title>mandated telescreen upheld</title>

	<description>
From the dissent of this amazing opinion: "They approve an ordinance
which literally forces a “Big Brother” style
 telescreen to look over one’s shoulder while accessing the Internet."
</description>
<cc:license rdf:resource="http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0"/>

	<content:encoded>

From the dissent of this amazing opinion: "They approve an ordinance which literally forces a “Big Brother” style telescreen to look over one’s shoulder while accessing the Internet."

</content:encoded> <link>http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001709.shtml</link> <dc:subject>bad law</dc:subject> <dc:creator>Lessig</dc:creator> <dc:date>2004-01-31T09:09:58-08:00</dc:date> </item>