RSS Tool Overview

Computers Articles | March 30, 2007

When considering the effect of design changes on particular tool or application types, one must also consider how those tools or apps are generally used today (even though we lack a centralized warehouse of information about them).

Some of the categories of use cases are:

RSS Original Sources

authors using text or simple XML editors
authors using "smart" XML editors
RSS generated by a user-chosen tool (eg. XML::RSS)
RSS generated by the hosting site/software (eg. Manila, eGroups)
See the RSS Info list

RSS Middleware

aggregators
distributors

RSS clients, renderers, and applications

server sites (my.*)
local generated home pages
RSS meta-data engines (queries, catalogs, etc.)
special-purpose apps (eg. RSS-on-desktop/toolbar, tickers)
See the RSS Info list

Some of the types of tools used for the above:

Generic RDF Libraries

may or may not have access to schema information
may not preserve or output RSS-required typed-element format
provide techniques for resolving repeated statements
very "loose" at the library level
(need specific list of tools)

Generic RSS libraries

may or may not have access to schema information
convert RSS format files to in-memory structures
generally very strict at the library level wrt. core elements
differences between RSS libs based on RDF or not
(need specific list of tools)

Dedicated Parsers

SAX, DOM, XSLT, XPath (generic XML libraries)
Tools and applications that read RSS on their own
Tools and applications built on top of generic libraries

It should be noted especially that there's a clear seperation of issues that affect applications (written to process known, specific RSS elements and modules) differently than generic libraries (which may or may not have specific RSS element and module information).

It would be very useful to have a set of basic examples within each of these usage categories and across several tool types. Something simple, along the lines of Ingo Macherius and Michel Rodriguez' "Ways to Rome" article that shows usage of different Perl modules to perform the same task.

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