Monday work

[scripting]

After sending a pointer to the readme, I asked Andrew Shell if he had any questions about feedBase and SYO2. Here's what he asked.

Will it support linking to other OPML files?

For example, I have several rivers each with its own OPML file. Would I be able to link from the one main OPML to the other ones and have everything picked up correctly?

What about duplicates? If a person has several rivers linked and a specific feed is on more than one of the river lists. Would that count as 1 for that user or 1 for each instance of that feed in that user's collection. We don't want people gaming the system by providing an OPML file with their blog listed 200 times moving it up to the top of the charts. :-)

I answered in a voice message. Adding it to the record here.

[andrewshell]

Good response Dave, I'm all for keeping it simple for users.

One thing I wanted to clarify was that I wasn't suggesting uploading multiple OPML files. I was wondering if the system would handle the OPML 2.0 link tag.

I could then have the single OPML file that was uploaded, link to my hosted OPML files (from my rivers) and parse them all. That way I could upload it once and not have to worry about maintaining it unless I added another river. When I add new feeds to my rivers it would be automatically picked up by SYO2.

That shouldn't add any complexity for less sophisticated users because they just wouldn't have link tags in their OPML files. But for the users that did have them, it would "just work".

If you're having a UI to manage the subscription list on the site it wouldn't even need to allow adding these. Just allow people to upload an OPML file and if they have link tags then so be it. Just make sure it doesn't break the UI if that's present.

[scripting]

Sorry I didn't respond to that question.

I totally get the enthusiasm. I manage my OPML that way too. I've done some very cool fancy tricks to make it much more manageable and to give me choice of using different tools. As long as they generate OPML, I can make it work using includes.

Technically it is possible for me to do it.

1. The package I use to read the OPML supports includes.

2. Right now feedBase says "don't expand includes" to that package.

The reason is right from the start I encountered problems with how people were using includes, carelessly, to create nasty situations. I remember that happened with the worldoutline software too.

Where I have control of the documents it makes sense to turn it on. But when other people submit them, that requires more thought. It's possible I can turn it on, but I wanted to deal with other stuff first.

Also, as with the other things I'm not implementing, a preprocessor you run locally could generate the flat include-less OPML files, so the data could get up there anyway.

Hope I'm understanding it now.

[scripting]

Here's the OPML-reading package.

https://github.com/scripting/opml

Dave

[andrewshell]

Cool. I'm not worried if it doesn't support it. I just wanted to make sure you understood specifically what I was suggesting. :-)

[scripting]

Inclusion goes back to MORE in 1987. I can't forget it. 👈🏽

On Monday, January 29, 2018, Andrew Shell notifications@github.com wrote:

Cool. I'm not worried if it doesn't support it. I just wanted to make sure you understood specifically what I was suggesting. :-)

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