Fri, 02 Jan 2004

Still Having RSS Problems
Now it's the turn of AmphetaDesk to catch some grief from me... I've been unable to read my Slashdot RSS feed for several hours now. Amphetadesk just poops out on it: returns an error (usually) about a malformed token, usually on a non-existent line.

A little investigation via Google brought up the fact that this behavior is quite intentional: XML is not a forgiving spec, and if a network error or some other bit gets boogered, Amphetadesk, quite compliantly, barfs.

This is unacceptable.

I don't care who made the error - Slashdot, Amphetadesk or XML. I just want to read my damn news feed!

I have a feeling that the real problem here is with the rigidity of the XML spec itself: Radio seemed to be duplicating the Wired feed rather habitually, and other aggregators that I've looked at have had other, equally esoteric problems.

According to one mailing list missive I found floating about, Amphetadesk only started really trying hard to comply with the XML standard in the most recent version. I may download some older models and see if they work any better: if not I'll have to find another solution or roll my own aggregator. Which seems like a real shame.

Kevin and Rene are coming over for dinner this evening - we're having goulash and playing euchre/drinking mead until who knows when? Should be a fun time.

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