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Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
----- Forwarded message from Bob McConnell <[email protected]> -----
Subject: RSS feed problem Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 08:24:52 -0500 From: Bob McConnell <[email protected]> To: [email protected]Good morning,
I am using Firefox 2.0.0.11 with Newsfox 0.8.3 to track your RSS feed at <http://linuxgazette.net/lg.rss>. Since I know that updates only happen once a month, I don't include LG in the regular refresh list, but check it manually the first few days of each month until I get the update.
However, for the past four months, there have not been any dates on the items in that feed. Therefore I have a mixed list with items from multiple months and no useful way to sort it by date. Is that an issue with the feed, or something on my end?
I do enjoy the Gazette. Although I started with SLS 1.02, I have been using Slackware at home since '93, and Red Hat/Fedora at work for the past two years. Unfortunately, we only have one small department using Linux and have to struggle with MS-Windows for company wide tools.
Thank you,
Bob McConnell Principal Communications Programmer The CBORD Group, Inc. 61 Brown Road Ithaca NY, 14850 Phone 607 257-2410 FAX 607 257-1902 Email [email protected] Web www.cbord.com
----- End forwarded message -----
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 11:02:50AM -0500, Benjamin Okopnik wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message from Bob McConnell <[email protected]> ----- > > Subject: RSS feed problem > Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 08:24:52 -0500 > From: Bob McConnell <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > > Good morning, > > I am using Firefox 2.0.0.11 with Newsfox 0.8.3 to track your RSS feed at > <http://linuxgazette.net/lg.rss>. Since I know that updates only happen > once a month, I don't include LG in the regular refresh list, but check > it manually the first few days of each month until I get the update. > > However, for the past four months, there have not been any dates on the > items in that feed. Therefore I have a mixed list with items from > multiple months and no useful way to sort it by date. Is that an issue > with the feed, or something on my end?
I don't know much about RSS other that how to generate a feed in one of my scripts; however, looking at the "lg.rss" file at LG and comparing it to several random RSS feeds found on the Net shows that we don't have a '<pubDate>[...]</pubdate>' stanza, which is the probable reason for it. The only puzzling thing is your implication that prior to the last four months there was some sort of date stamp: this would mean that <pubDate> is perhaps not the answer.
In any case, even though I'm definitely not a snake-handler (our scripts are written in Python), I'll give a shot at fixing it up - since our Pythoneers, including those who wrote all the scripts originally as well as the ones who did the RSS/RDF stuff, seem to be quite reticent (or perhaps just reticulated?) these days.
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Bob McConnell [rvm at CBORD.com]
Ben,
The alternative is that either Newsfox or your feed changed the way the date was handled back in the September-November time frame. There were several updates to both Firefox and Newsfox, but since you only update once a month and I took some vacation during that period, I don't know if there was a traceable link between them.
Thank you,
Bob
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 12:11:54PM -0500, Bob McConnell wrote:
> Ben, > > The alternative is that either Newsfox or your feed changed the way the > date was handled back in the September-November time frame. There were > several updates to both Firefox and Newsfox, but since you only update > once a month and I took some vacation during that period, I don't know > if there was a traceable link between them.
Ah, yes... the wonderful situation where everything except the one
constant [1] has changed. Repeatedly. I just love those (that tends to
be the point where my clients call me in to put out the fire. 
In any case, I've just tweaked the calling script and the relevant template to contain <lastBuildDate> and <pubDate> stanzas, regenerated the feeds, and uploaded the whole shebang to the LG site. Please fire up your RSS reader and let me know if that took care of it.
[1] "It doesn't work."
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Bob McConnell [rvm at CBORD.com]
Ahh, but it did work at one time. There was a date displayed for several months. I believe it disappeared with the December issue.
I tried refreshing the feed, but nothing downloaded. I will try a few more times this afternoon and let you know what I see.
Bob
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 01:19:04PM -0500, Bob McConnell wrote:
> Ahh, but it did work at one time. There was a date displayed for several > months. I believe it disappeared with the December issue. > > I tried refreshing the feed, but nothing downloaded. I will try a few > more times this afternoon and let you know what I see.
I've just managed - through a bunch more Python-mangling and a bit of Perl scripting - to not only generate the dates (I've installed the 'blam' RSS reader to check this out) but also include the first paragraph of every article in the RSS feed. For the lg_{mail, launderette, bytes, etc.} files, it generates a list of all the section hedings in the file. A nice bit of improvement, I think.
Thanks for the initial push, Bob!
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Bob McConnell [rvm at CBORD.com]
Ben,
Yes, that is a wonderful improvement. Looks great from here.
Thank you,
Bob
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
While I was at it, I decided to go whole hog - both the RSS and the RDF feed have been modified to contain the first para/headings list now. Unfortunately, Atom has changed spec - *a lot* - since Jimmy created it, and I'm really, really uninterested in studying the fine details of something I'm never again likely to use.
If anyone here knows the state of the state for Atom, and is willing to help set up the template for generating it, great. Otherwise, it's going to become one with the dinosaurs - a thing of the past.
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *