A big problem in RSS-land is when people put full HTML in the description element of their feed items because people go crazy in there with advertising and trackers and all kinds of stuff I don't want in my timeline. So we strip out most of the html, but in doing so strip out a lot of meaning from the writing.
I thought about this for a while and then realized Markdown is just sitting there waiting for us to adopt it. It didn't exist yet when RSS 2.0 came out in 2002, but now it's very much out there and I think the two formats were made for each other.
I've specified a way to add Markdown to a feed, and it breaks nothing, and offers us a chance to evolve it into the base of content apps and reader apps.
Here's a key point -- FeedLand already supports it. If an item has a <lsource:markdown> element, we will use that over what's in the <description> element.
It would be fantastic if WordPress did this on the content side. Convert the user's text to Markdown, and add it to the item as a <source:markdown> element.
NetNewsWire has committed to supporting so it's not just FeedLand.
A big problem in RSS-land is when people put full HTML in the description element of their feed items because people go crazy in there with advertising and trackers and all kinds of stuff I don't want in my timeline. So we strip out most of the html, but in doing so strip out a lot of meaning from the writing.
I thought about this for a while and then realized Markdown is just sitting there waiting for us to adopt it. It didn't exist yet when RSS 2.0 came out in 2002, but now it's very much out there and I think the two formats were made for each other.
I've specified a way to add Markdown to a feed, and it breaks nothing, and offers us a chance to evolve it into the base of content apps and reader apps.
Here's a key point -- FeedLand already supports it. If an item has a <lsource:markdown> element, we will use that over what's in the <description> element.
It would be fantastic if WordPress did this on the content side. Convert the user's text to Markdown, and add it to the item as a <source:markdown> element.
NetNewsWire has committed to supporting so it's not just FeedLand.
I've written up developer notes for this.