RE: [syndication] Coming soon -- Syndic8.com...

["Ben Parker" <ben@africaonline.com>]

> Is there any reasonably packaged, open source (preferably GPL or LGPL)
> html scraper->rss code out there? Like:-
> - Stapler for radio
> - Blogify
> - The scraper code out of newsisfree?
>
> I'm thinking that it would be good to spread the effort and encourage
> lots of people to provide scraper->rss services.

As usual, please excuse my ignorance:

Grabbing the feed from X and splurging it on my page(s)(for ever,
maintenance-free) with a couple of lines of code is surely the thrill of
RSS. But most "webmasters equate this "live headlines" trick with providers
like moreover or newsisfree, not with a format called RSS, nor with the
script that does the translation work. This is perhaps a pity.

I - and I think others - need a very basic RSS->Javascript tool for UNIX in
a nice familiar language like Perl. This "RSS2Jscript.pl" script based on
Perl XML::RSS is on my to do list (and has been for a while), and I imagine
it is ludicrously simple.  I will do it if no-one has done it already.
Really! The end of free service from much-loved middle men moreover and
newsisfree is motivating...

All the other tools I have found are in funny languages that are a little
hairier than my normal diet. Or involve wodges of supporting downloads that
make me procrastinate.  There are three or four I have found out about, one
is the ASP one (or two?) the other is written in rebol (thanks to p3.org!)
and the latest is John Munsch's in Java, mentioned on this list a few days
back. And somewhere in Mike Krus' mighty HPE there must be the same thing in
um... ?Python?.


Ben Parker
Editor-in-Chief
Africa Online
PO Box 63017, Nairobi, Kenya
http://www.africaonline.com

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