4 ms·

Sortof, if you are reading via a web based reader, the service itself only reads the feed once, and the users view the cached version.

jessriedel 8y ago
You mean the fact that aggregators like The Old Reader just download the RSS file from the website periodically, and then serve up cached copies to their many user? True, although this is another way of saying that some of the value added by aggregators only exists by virtue of the terrible design of RSS.
- JetSpiegel 8y ago
  It might be construed as a feature, since a blog can consist of simply static files, no need for running any code relating to RSS.
  - jessriedel 8y ago
    It doesn't need code. Just a static text file with a list of publication dates and URLs, each of which points to static HTML file for each publicly available posts. Then each user could check the list and download only what's new, without needing an aggregator. Users would never need to download the same content twice.
    - jerf 8y ago
      You can pretty much do that with RSS, if you want. Slightly decorated with some XML stuff but that'll pretty much gzip right away. Statically, if you use the right web servers and magic invocations the web server may specify. You'll find your feed readers aren't particularly impressed, though.
      - jessriedel 8y ago
        This won't work because my users don't have software to automatically download the new posts, curate them, and save them for offline reading (in contrast to having the posts directly in the RSS file, for which all that does happen). That would require...a new standard, i.e., a replacement for RSS.
        jerf 8y ago
        No, it would require a new type of consumer. RSS can carry a list of URLs just fine, as a degenerate case of RSS. RSS does not itself mandate that the content of the RSS must be displayed in "some sort of feed reader". The good news is that means you don't have to wait. You can write that now. It will work on existing RSS feeds, just not quite as optimally for your proposed use case as you might personally like, but it will still work. It will work even better on yours, which will also work in conventional RSS readers. Now, you might have problems getting "the real page content" from your URLs, but that's a separate problem. (History strongly suggests the large-scale content producers would actively fight you if you try, because you'll probably be trying to strip their ad revenue either deliberately or accidentally as part of what you'd be doing. Which is, after all, the reason why RSS is already not terribly favored by that crowd and why they want you in closed gardens of their own devising... unfortunately getting around this problem is a great deal more difficult than hypothesizing that some sort of new standard could somehow deal with it....)
        jessriedel 8y ago
        I'm using "RSS" to refer to the standard practice people actually do. It's not very important that some organization somewhere defined an official RSS standard which in principle is flexible but which in practice is never used other than in a very specific way. (Without an agreement on how to use it more generally, no one can build an offline blog archive reader, and the fact that RSS could in principle be the base is irrelevant.) If you want to play semantics, I'm fine with rephrasing my complaint as: "We need to build on the flexible super official RSS standard -- which is little more than an XML file -- and actually agree on a way of delivering blog archives for offline reading. RSS in practice does not currently achieve this very simple goal." This is just different words to describe the same thing. > You can write that now. It will work on existing RSS feeds, just not quite as optimally for your proposed use case as you might personally like, but it will still work. Huh? Other website owners who would like me to be able to read their archives can modify their RSS file, but we have no agreement on how to do that in a standard way. Likewise, I could modify my RSS file, but since there isn't a standard my readers won't have software to take advantage of it. > (History strongly suggests the large-scale content producers would actively fight you if you try,...unfortunately getting around this problem is a great deal more difficult than hypothesizing that some sort of new standard could somehow deal with it....) The blogs I want to read offline do not have ads and do not care about this. I just want a solution that works for this simple problem, not a way to take content from people who don't want to give it to me without attaching ads.

jessriedel 8y ago

You mean the fact that aggregators like The Old Reader just download the RSS file from the website periodically, and then serve up cached copies to their many user? True, although this is another way of saying that some of the value added by aggregators only exists by virtue of the terrible design of RSS.

JetSpiegel 8y ago
It might be construed as a feature, since a blog can consist of simply static files, no need for running any code relating to RSS.
- jessriedel 8y ago
  It doesn't need code. Just a static text file with a list of publication dates and URLs, each of which points to static HTML file for each publicly available posts. Then each user could check the list and download only what's new, without needing an aggregator. Users would never need to download the same content twice.
  - jerf 8y ago
    You can pretty much do that with RSS, if you want. Slightly decorated with some XML stuff but that'll pretty much gzip right away. Statically, if you use the right web servers and magic invocations the web server may specify. You'll find your feed readers aren't particularly impressed, though.
    - jessriedel 8y ago
      This won't work because my users don't have software to automatically download the new posts, curate them, and save them for offline reading (in contrast to having the posts directly in the RSS file, for which all that does happen). That would require...a new standard, i.e., a replacement for RSS.
      - jerf 8y ago
        No, it would require a new type of consumer. RSS can carry a list of URLs just fine, as a degenerate case of RSS. RSS does not itself mandate that the content of the RSS must be displayed in "some sort of feed reader". The good news is that means you don't have to wait. You can write that now. It will work on existing RSS feeds, just not quite as optimally for your proposed use case as you might personally like, but it will still work. It will work even better on yours, which will also work in conventional RSS readers. Now, you might have problems getting "the real page content" from your URLs, but that's a separate problem. (History strongly suggests the large-scale content producers would actively fight you if you try, because you'll probably be trying to strip their ad revenue either deliberately or accidentally as part of what you'd be doing. Which is, after all, the reason why RSS is already not terribly favored by that crowd and why they want you in closed gardens of their own devising... unfortunately getting around this problem is a great deal more difficult than hypothesizing that some sort of new standard could somehow deal with it....)
        jessriedel 8y ago
        I'm using "RSS" to refer to the standard practice people actually do. It's not very important that some organization somewhere defined an official RSS standard which in principle is flexible but which in practice is never used other than in a very specific way. (Without an agreement on how to use it more generally, no one can build an offline blog archive reader, and the fact that RSS could in principle be the base is irrelevant.) If you want to play semantics, I'm fine with rephrasing my complaint as: "We need to build on the flexible super official RSS standard -- which is little more than an XML file -- and actually agree on a way of delivering blog archives for offline reading. RSS in practice does not currently achieve this very simple goal." This is just different words to describe the same thing. > You can write that now. It will work on existing RSS feeds, just not quite as optimally for your proposed use case as you might personally like, but it will still work. Huh? Other website owners who would like me to be able to read their archives can modify their RSS file, but we have no agreement on how to do that in a standard way. Likewise, I could modify my RSS file, but since there isn't a standard my readers won't have software to take advantage of it. > (History strongly suggests the large-scale content producers would actively fight you if you try,...unfortunately getting around this problem is a great deal more difficult than hypothesizing that some sort of new standard could somehow deal with it....) The blogs I want to read offline do not have ads and do not care about this. I just want a solution that works for this simple problem, not a way to take content from people who don't want to give it to me without attaching ads.