discuss: Re: revival of the weekly news - RSS feed and XSLT
Subject:
Re: revival of the weekly news - RSS feed and XSLT
From:
####@####.####
Date:
1 May 2003 13:41:35 -0000
Message-Id: <OF062FF8AA.58458921-ON88256D19.004AB664@notes.seagate.com>
David Lawyer said:
> ICBW but I just don't think that our news is all that important to need
> a rss feed.
I personally think the New HOWTOs and Updated HOWTOs make good categories
for News Syndication. Just like freshmeat has RSS feed for new software
releases, I think TLDP should have one for the new/updated documentation
releases.
Plus it is easy to get a RSS feed out of DocBook XML file of the Weekly
Newsletter. And XSLT to parse the Newsletter to create and RSS feed will do
the job.
Thanks.
In Peace,
Saqib Ali
http://www.seagate.com/cheetah/
David Lawyer
####@####.#### To: ####@####.####
No Phone Info cc:
Available Subject: Re: revival of the weekly news - RSS feed and XSLT
04/29/2003 06:55
PM
Why do we need to use rss (Really Simple Syndication)? It's not at all
simple. Here's the start of an rss doc:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- RSS generated by Radio UserLand v8.0.5 on 9/30/2002; 4:00:00 AM
Pacific -->
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:blogChannel="
http://backend.userland.com/blogChannelModule">
<channel>
<title>Scripting News</title>
<link>http://www.scripting.com/</link>
<description>A weblog about scripting and stuff
like that.</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<blogChannel:blogRoll>http://radio.weblogs.com/0001015/userland/scriptingNewsLeftLinks.opml</blogChannel:blogRoll>
<blogChannel:mySubscriptions>http://radio.weblogs.com/0001015/gems/mySubscriptions.opml</blogChannel:mySubscriptions>
<blogChannel:blink>http://diveintomark.org/</blogChannel:blink>
<copyright>Copyright 1997-2002 Dave
Winer</copyright>
<lastBuildDate>Mon, 30 Sep 2002 11:00:00
GMT</lastBuildDate>
<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss</docs>
<generator>Radio UserLand v8.0.5</generator>
<category domain="Syndic8">1765</category>
####@####.####
####@####.####
<ttl>40</ttl>
<item>
<description>
"rssflowersalignright"With any luck we should have one or two
more days of namespaces stuff here on Scripting News. It feels like it's
winding down. Later in the week I'm going to a <a href
="http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/conferences/conf_detail.jhtml?id=s775stg&pid=144XCF"
>conference</a> put on by the Harvard Business School. So that
should change the topic a bit. The following week I'm off to Colorado for
the <a href
="http://www.digitalidworld.com/conference/2002/index.php"
>Digital ID World</a> conference. We had to go through namespaces,
and it turns out that weblogs are a great way to work around mail lists
that are clogged with <a href
="http://www.userland.com/whatIsStopEnergy">stop
energy</a>. I think we solved the problem, have reached a consensus,
and will be ready to move forward shortly.</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Sep 2002 01:56:02
GMT</pubDate>
<guid>http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backissues/2002/09/29#When:6:56:02PM</guid>
</item>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It doesn't look simple to me. The <description> uses "entity
characters" (such as <) and is thus essentially unreadable. It's
really html so rss should have had a <html> tag which would say that what
follows is html so that real html tags could be used (with < instead of
< etc.) Perhaps this would violate xml specs.
ICBW but I just don't think that our news is all that important to need
a rss feed. Also, does our news need to be in Docbook? What's wrong
with just html? I'm thinking of the case where the person working on
the weekly news doesn't know DocBook or xml. Well, I suppose that
we're using DocBook as a source for writing html so if someone takes
over the LDP Weekly News (not TLDP) who doesn't know DocBook, they could
always create the html by some other method (directly, using LinuxDoc,
etc.)
Perhaps David Merrill will pick up on it again, in which case we could
leave it up for him to decide how to handle it. I don't really know all
the facts and implications about this proposal and wonder if rss would
get more publications to carry our news. If it would be a big help,
it may be worth the trouble. But I just wanted to show everyone what a
mess rss source looks like.
David Lawyer
On Tue, Apr 29, 2003 at 07:39:16AM -0700, ####@####.#### wrote:
>
> There are several ways to do this. One way (which I prefer) is to use
> Apache Cocoon.
>
> Here is how it will work. We will have an XSLT which will translate the
> "Weekly News" XML to an RSS feed
> (http://backend.userland.com/rss#whatIsRss).
>
> Then Cocoon will use this XSLT to translate the "Weekly News" XSL to RSS.
>
> Here is e.g. of Cocoon generating HTML (on the fly) from Docbook XML :
> http://www.seagate.cc:8080/cocoon/mount/docbook/linux-faq.html
> http://www.seagate.cc:8080/cocoon/mount/docbook/linux-faq.pdf
> http://www.seagate.cc:8080/cocoon/mount/docbook/openjade.html
> This uses Norman Walsh XSLT.
>
> This is different from creating an RSS feed from DocBook XML, but the
idea
> is same.
>
> Here is another e.g (converting RSS XML to HTML).
>
http://www.seagate.cc:8080/cocoon/mount/rssfeed/http://www.w3.org/2000/08/w3c-synd/home.rss
>
http://www.seagate.cc:8080/cocoon/mount/rssfeed/http://www.xmlhack.com/rss.php
>
> In our case we will be converting DocBook XML to RSS.
>
> our URL for RSS feed could look like:
>
http://www.seagate.cc:8080/cocoon/mount/generaterss/http://www.tldp.org/ldpwn/latest.xml
>
>
> Let me know if I can clarify further. English is not my native language,
so
> I have trouble explaining things. :)
>
> In Peace,
> Saqib Ali
> http://www.seagate.com/cheetah/
