Attention, OPML and nails on head

re: Attention, OPML and nails on head

J Wynia — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 15:40:49 GMT

I'm actually going to disagree with Nick a bit here Alex and say that "import/export" isn't what people are really after.

What really opens things up is when your aggregator can just be *pointed* to an OPML URL. That URL can then be dynamically manipulated in whatever ways you want and *every* aggregator is updated whenever you use it. I did the import/export thing, but read feeds in multiple ways and the sync issues crop up pretty quickly. However, my IMAP reader setup just points to an OPML file that changes whenever I add or remove feeds and it does it all automatically.

Import/export is a relatively clumsy, static approach to moving data around. I MUCH prefer to have the portions that are "mine" stored somewhere I control and have all of the tools just read it whenever they need it.

re: Attention, OPML and nails on head

phil jones — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:43:59 GMT

What I can't help wondering though, is whether current aggregators that "support" importing and exporting OPML, preserve the XML sufficiently to keep new namespace tags.

Can we be sure that if I export my subscriptions from aggregator A to B, edit them in B, then export for aggregator C, that B hasn't lost the any non-standard tags from other namespaces that were added by A?

I'd assume we *will* need the aggregators to be upgraded to know about this information.

Alex Barnett blog : My Attention writings

Alex Barnett blog : My Attention writings — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 04:32:13 GMT

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