mitchdowney
commented
2 years ago @Inrumpo this is a great idea. I didn't realize the <itunes:subtitle> tag was here for that purpose.
We'll need to update our server-side RSS parser (in podverse-api) extract the value and save it to our Episodes database table, and the client-side RSS parser (for custom feeds, used in podverse-rn) to extract the value and save it locally to the app.
Should be an hour or two of work. I'll try to get this in a release sometime in October.
Status quo
As of now (F-Droid Version 3.1.11) Podverse is displaying the
<description>tag in the episode overview:Issue
Since space is very limited, those descriptions are getting truncated heavily. The result is not very useful. The user hardly gets any information out of this.
Solution
Luckily there is another (old) RSS feed tag for this usecase: The subtitle. Even though that tag doesn't get much love lately for reasons unknown, it would fit perfectly. iTunes arguably showing the subtitle only in rare cases doesn't make this any less useful. A subtitle is what comes after/under a title and provides (hinting) information in a short and compact (and plaintext) way. Perfect! Some more information on this tag here.
Proposal
Display the content of the
<itunes:subtitle>RSS feed tag in a podcast's episode overview, if available. If not available, fall back to truncated<description>content.