remake/remodel

RSS is an XML-based file format used for summarizing the content of web sites, especially news sites and weblogs, in a manner that is easily parseable. A typical RSS file (or ‘feed’) will contain, at a minimum, the name of the site, the URL of the site, plus a title, URL, and short description for each site entry. The headlines on the Slashdot sidebars are generated using RSS, for instance, and the chompy.net front page displays post summaries using information extracted from your weblogs’ RSS feeds.

nntprss is a new Java-based program that takes RSS feeds and serves them using NNTP, the network news protocol recognized by news clients such as Outlook Express or Forte Agent. I made a small change to the source code to make the software more flexible, and now there’s a server running at rss.cpl593h.net, port 1119. Point your newsreader at that host, being sure to specify port 1119, and subscribe to a few feeds. If you have problems with your particular news client, please contact the authors of nttprss so they can fix it.

The quality of the RSS feeds varies considerably from feed to feed. Some feeds contain nothing but a headline and a link, while some contain the full text (and images) of each entry. If you wish for your RSS feed to display your entry’s full text (which certainly makes the server more useful), please see these instructions, for example (I recommend not replacing your existing feed, but adding a new feed). If you update your feed URL or find others that are good, please let me know.

Finally, nntprss is GPL‘d software. Here is my code change, starting at line 220 of Channel.java:

String description =
    XMLHelper.getChildElementValue(
        itemElm,
        "content:encoded");
if ((description == null) || (description == "")) {
        description =
            XMLHelper.getChildElementValue(
                itemElm,
                "description",
                "");
}