Re: Aggregating and displaying feeds

[hpyle@agora.co.uk]

> The client should, by default, only grab the headlines.  A given
> channel, if it provides richer content, should be selectable for
> greater content.  That way if I find an overall channel to
> be "download worthy" then I should be able to set this.

Bill, I think this is different subject (full content) from Julian's (categories and ratings), but... it is something we're trying to do in our groovey YAFA.  (Great acronym, btw).

Very few feeds seem to use the RSS 0.92 <enclosure> or 1.0 <content:items>, and for an end user they're really tricky.  Just because you're publishing multi-megabyte Grateful Dead mp3 enclosures doesn't mean I want them.  And, let's say I'm subscribing to an analyst's feed which encloses valuable reports as PDF, I probably do want to receive them, but only when at work on the big pipe.

Our approach so far is to
- set a flag per channel, indicating whether you want to download enclosures;  and
- set a "role" on individual members of the groove space indicating that they can do enclosure downloads for distribution in the space.

Very rough and ready, but I think the standards are already sufficient.


-Hugh

hpyle@agora.co.uk       | +44 (0)20 8783 3592
http://www.agora.co.uk/ | http://groovelog.agora.co.uk/  | http://rendezvoo.net/