From: Daniel Stenberg <daniel_at_haxx.se>
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 20:16:39 +0200 (CEST)

On Mon, 28 Apr 2003, Chris Holt wrote:

> Did you look at the tutorial?
>
> http://www.devx.com/xml/Article/10790/0/page/1

I did, and it clearly spelled out that I cannot embed links etc in the
descriptions using the tags offered in the spec.

> hrefs are (link) (/link)
> line items are (item) (/item)
> images can be embedded with (url) (/url)

Not really, unless I read something wrong. The <link> tags are only for a
single item, outside the <description> tag. So, saying something like the
firstitem in the current feed:

 <li class="news"> <a href="http://bjorn.haxx.se/">Björn Stenberg</a> called
 out for a <a
href="http://rockbox.haxx.se/mail/archive/rockbox-archive-2003-04/1232.shtml">Brute
 Force Bug Hunt</a> in an attempt to track down the "red led dead" problems
 that have haunted Rockbox the last couple of months. Join in and help!

It is not possible using the RSS tags since there are two hrefs in there. I
would then have to do something like this:

 <item>
 <link>http://rockbox.haxx.se/digest/digest.html#correct-date</link>
 <description>
  Björn Stenberg called out for a Brute Force Bug Hunt in an attempt to track
 down the "red led dead" problems that have haunted Rockbox the last couple
 of months. Join in and help!
 </description>
 </item>

Which then would force people to have to click twice to find Björn's posting.
Or, I can link directly to Björn's posting, which could make sense in this
case but I can easily come up with other paragraphs where I've used more than
one link in the text and thus cannot simply put one single link there for the
whole description.

Hence my conclusion that embedded HTML makes it easier.

> I'm sure there are readers that can handle HTML, btu HTML markup is not
> allowed per the spec. You can accomplish the functional equivalent of
> outline, line item and href tags using RSS tags, and get more
> compatibility, I would think.

I need to be able to edit these texts with ease, not fighting XML demons in
the process. I need the HTML and RSS to be generated from the same source and
the source needs to be plain and simple.

I still can't see how I can do this without HTML like this.

> I don't see how it would be harder to substitute the RSS tags for the HTML
> tags you are using, if it is, I'm sorry and none of this is meant to
> belittle your contribution.

I appreciate your input and help, I do, but since this is a rather mild
violation of the spec that works on multiple RSS-readers I don't think it is
worth fighting for.

-- 
 Daniel Stenberg -- http://rockbox.haxx.se/ -- http://daniel.haxx.se/

Received on 2003-04-28