#!perl -w
# RSS2Leafnode -- copy RSS feeds to a local news spool
# Copyright 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017 Kevin Ryde
#
# This file is part of RSS2Leafnode.
#
# RSS2Leafnode is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
# Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option) any later
# version.
#
# RSS2Leafnode is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
# or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
# for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
# with RSS2Leafnode. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
use 5.010;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Encode; # for Encode::PERLQQ
use Encode::Locale 0.02; # version 0.02 for console_in,console_out
use PerlIO::encoding; # for fallback
use App::RSS2Leafnode;
our $VERSION = 79;
# locale encoding conversion on the tty, wide-chars everywhere internally
# for instance $subject from an item might be wide chars printed when --verbose
{ no warnings 'once';
local $PerlIO::encoding::fallback = Encode::PERLQQ(); # \x{1234} style
(binmode (STDOUT, ':encoding(console_out)')
&& binmode (STDERR, ':encoding(console_out)'))
or die "Cannot set :encoding on stdout/stderr: $!\n";
}
my $r2l = App::RSS2Leafnode->new;
exit $r2l->command_line;
__END__
=for stopwords rss2leafnode rss leafnode NNTP config leafnode undef charset UTF-8 non-ascii charsets builtins misconfigured Eg Unrendered Google pre-releases Ryde PNG libxml multibyte codings feed's NOAA XHTML unescaping X-From-Url X-RSS-Url X-RSS-Generator eg sn codepage unescape favicon kbytes repost r2l.perl conf ie GPL appication WordPress pre RDF reposted MHTML perl-mode renderer LWP mis-spelling Unrecognised unrecognised multi-author html recoding
=head1 NAME
rss2leafnode -- post RSS or Atom feeds and web pages to newsgroups
=head1 SYNOPSIS
rss2leafnode [--options]
=head1 DESCRIPTION
RSS2Leafnode downloads RSS or Atom feeds and posts items as messages to an
NNTP news server. It's designed to make text items available for reading in
local newsgroups, not propagating anywhere (though that's not enforced).
Desired feeds are given in a configuration file F<.rss2leafnode.conf> in
your home directory. For example to put a feed into group "r2l.perl"
fetch_rss ('r2l.perl', 'http://log.perl.org/atom.xml');
This is actually Perl code, so comment lines begin with C<#> and you can use
conditionals, variables, etc (see L<perlintro> or L<perlsyn>). The target
newsgroup must exist (see for example L</Leafnode> below). With that done,
run C<rss2leafnode> as
rss2leafnode
You can automate with C<cron> or similar. If you do it under user C<news>
it could be just after a normal news fetch. The C<--config> option below
lets you run different config files at different times, etc. Code in the
conf file could do that too. See F<examples/rss2leafnode.conf> in the
RSS2Leafnode sources for a complete sample.
Messages are added to the news spool using NNTP "POST" commands. When a
feed is re-downloaded any items previously added are not repeated. Multiple
feeds can be put in a single newsgroup. Each feed is posted as it's
downloaded, so the first feed's articles appear while other feeds are still
being downloaded.
The target news server follows the L<Net::NNTP> defaults, or the newsgroup
name can be in the form of a C<news:> or C<nntp:> URL of a server on a
different host or port. For example a personal server on a high port
number,
fetch_rss('news://somehost.mydomain.org:8119/r2l.weather',
'http://feeds.feedburner.com/PTCC');
=head2 Web Pages
Plain web pages can be downloaded too. Each time the page changes a new
article is injected. This is good for a latest news or status page. For
example
fetch_html ('r2l.music',
'http://www.abc.net.au/rage/playlist/print/saturday_print.htm');
The target can be an image or similar directly too. It's simply put in a
news message with its indicated MIME type. How well it displays depends on
your newsreader.
fetch_html('r2l.weather',
'http://www.bom.gov.au/difacs/IDX0604.gif');
The message "Subject" is the HTML C<< <title> >> or possibly something
better from C<URI::Title> or C<Image::ExifTool> if you have those.
C<URI::Title> has special cases for a couple of unhelpful sites and
C<Image::ExifTool> can get a PNG image title.
If a web page isn't at a fixed location you can write some Perl code in
F<.rss2leafnode.conf> to construct a URL with a date etc. It might be worth
attempting a couple of nearby dates if you're not certain when the new one
becomes available.
=head2 Re-Downloading
HTTP C<ETag> and C<Last-Modified> headers are used, if provided by the
server, to avoid re-downloading unchanged content (feeds or web pages). RSS
C<< <thr:count> >> or C<< <slash:comments> >> are used to skip unchanged
comments feeds. Values seen from the last run are saved in a
F<.rss2leafnode.status> file in your home directory. The C<--verbose>
option shows when a server doesn't have C<ETag> or C<Last-Modified>.
If you have C<XML::RSS::Timing> then it's used for RSS C<< <ttl> >>,
C<< <updateFrequency> >>, etc from a feed. This means the feed is not
re-downloaded until its declared update times. But only a few feeds have
good timing info, most merely have a C<ttl> advising for instance 5 minutes
between rechecks.
With C<--verbose> the next calculated update time is printed, in case you
wonder why nothing is happening. The easiest way to force a re-download is
to delete the F<~/.rss2leafnode.status> file. Old status file entries are
automatically dropped if you don't fetch a particular feed for a while, so
that file should normally need no maintenance.
=head2 Leafnode
C<rss2leafnode> was originally created with the C<leafnode> program in mind,
but can be used with any server accepting posts. It's your responsibility
to be careful where a target newsgroup propagates. Don't make automated
postings to the world!
For leafnode version 2 see its F<README> file section "LOCAL NEWSGROUPS" on
creating local-only groups. Add a line to the
F</etc/news/leafnode/local.groups> file like
r2l.stuff y My various feeds
The group name is arbitrary and the description is optional, but note it
must be a tab character between the name and the "y" and between the "y" and
any description. "y" means posting is allowed.
=head2 Small News
The Small News "sn" program is a another possible local server. Create
groups in it with command
snnewgroup r2l.something
When running the C<snntpd> daemon from C<inetd> or similar don't forget a
logger program argument on the command line as described its F<INSTALL.run>
file, otherwise log messages go to the client connection and will upset most
client program code, including C<Net::NNTP> used by C<rss2leafnode>.
=head2 Copyright
It's your responsibility to check the terms of use for any feeds or web
pages you download with C<rss2leafnode>. Pay particular attention if
propagating or re-transmitting resulting messages.
Copyright or license statements in a feed are included in the messages as
C<X-Copyright> headers. Unless the content is in the public domain such
copyright notices should be retained.
The transformations RSS2Leafnode makes to turn feed items into messages are
purely mechanical and for that reason the author believes the program's
terms (ie. GPL, per L</"LICENSE"> below) are not imposed on the results.
=head1 COMMAND LINE OPTIONS
The command line options are
=over 4
=item C<--config=/some/filename>
Read the specified configuration file instead of F<~/.rss2leafnode.conf>.
=item C<--help>
Print some brief help information.
=item C<--verbose>
Print some diagnostics about what's being done. With C<--verbose=2> print
various technical details.
=item C<--version>
Print the program version number and exit.
=back
=head1 CONFIG OPTIONS
The following config options can be set either in global variables, or on a
per-feed basis in an individual C<fetch_rss()> or C<fetch_html()>.
=over 4
=item $rss_get_links (default 0)
=item C<fetch_rss ("group", "url", rss_get_links =E<gt> G)>
If set to 1 then download links in each item and include the content in the
news message. For example,
$rss_get_links = 1;
fetch_rss ('r2l.finance',
'http://au.biz.yahoo.com/financenews/htt/financenews.xml');
Not all feeds have interesting things at their link. Sometimes the RSS has
the full item text already. But if the RSS is a summary then
C<$rss_get_links> makes the full article ready to read immediately, instead
of having to click through from the message.
Only the immediate link target URL is retrieved. No images within the page
are downloaded, which is often a good thing to reduce bloat or avoid
occasional advertising in feeds. You'll probably have trouble if the link
target uses frames (a set of HTML pages instead of just one).
=item $rss_get_comments (default 0)
=item C<fetch_rss ("group", "url", rss_get_comments =E<gt> G)>
If true then download the comments feeds for items and post as followup news
articles. For example,
fetch_rss ('r2l.food',
'http://wickedgooddinner.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default',
rss_get_comments => 1);
To send a followup comment you usually must go to the links in the original
article (or the followups) and use some sort of web form. Posting a message
to the newsgroup goes nowhere.
When a feed is available in both Atom and RSS formats sometimes only the
Atom one includes a comments feed URL.
Comments feeds are followed for as long as an article appears in the feed,
though in the current implementation it might be checked for new comments
only when the originating feed changes.
=item $render (default 0)
=item C<fetch_rss ("group", "url", render =E<gt> R)>
=item C<fetch_html ("group", "url", render =E<gt> R)>
If true then render HTML as plain text in the news messages. Normally item
text, downloaded parts from C<$rss_get_links>, and C<fetch_html()> pages are
all presented as C<text/html>. If your newsreader doesn't handle HTML very
well then C<render> is a good way to see just the text. Setting C<1> uses
C<HTML::FormatText>,
$render = 1; # to use HTML::FormatText
fetch_rss ('r2l.weather',
'http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/forecastrss?p=ASXX0001&u=f');
Setting C<"WithLinks"> uses the C<HTML::FormatText::WithLinks> variant (you
must have that module) which shows HTML links as footnotes.
fetch_rss ('r2l.stuff',
'http://rss.sciam.com/sciam/basic-science',
render => 'WithLinks');
=cut
# HTML::FormatText::Elinks yes
# HTML::FormatText::Html2text no output_charset
# HTML::FormatText::Lynx yes
# HTML::FormatText::Links no UTF-8 output_charset
# HTML::FormatText::Netrik no UTF-8 output as such
# HTML::FormatText::Vilistextum yes if built with UTF-8
# HTML::FormatText::W3m yes
# HTML::FormatText::Zen no, latin-1 only
=pod
Settings C<"elinks">, C<"lynx"> or C<"w3m">use the respective external
program. You must have C<HTML::FormatExternal> and the program.
fetch_rss ('r2l.sport',
'http://fr.news.yahoo.com/rss/rugby.xml',
rss_get_links => 1,
render => 'lynx');
C<"vilistextum"> can be used too if it is built with C<--enable-multibyte>
for UTF-8 output. Other C<HTML::FormatExternal> programs generally can't be
used as they don't have output charset UTF-8.
=item $render_width (default 60)
The number of columns to use when rendering HTML to plain text or when
wrapping Atom text. You can set this to whatever you find easiest to read,
or any special width needed by a particular feed.
=item $get_icon (default 0)
=item C<fetch_rss ("group", "url", get_icon =E<gt> G)>
=item C<fetch_html ("group", "url", get_icon =E<gt> G)>
Download an RSS/Atom icon or HTML favicon as an image for the C<Face>
header. C<Image::Magick> is required for image processing if not already
PNG format and maximum size 48x48 (in size attributes).
The C<Face> header is shown by Gnus and perhaps only a few other
news readers. In Gnus it appears with "From:" in article mode on a
graphical screen. It can be a good visual cue to the origin, but may not
always be worth the extra download.
$get_icon = 1;
fetch_rss ('r2l.whatsnew',
'http://www.archive.org/services/collection-rss.php');
Banners much wider than high are suppressed as probably advertising and
anyway not suited to 48x48 size limit of the C<Face> header specification.
A 48x48 image might add around 4 kbytes or more to each message.
For plain RSS and Atom feeds an image is normally a per-channel attribute so
it's the same for all articles from the feed. An C<itunes:image> or
C<activity:actor> can be per-item and is used if present.
=item $rss_newest_only (default 0 for all)
=item C<fetch_rss ("group", "url", rss_newest_only =E<gt> $count)>
=item C<fetch_rss ("group", "url", rss_newest_only =E<gt> $period)>
Take only newest items from an RSS feed. The default is 0 which means take
all items from the feed. The value is either a number for the latest few
items, eg. 10 items,
fetch_rss('r2l.test',
'http://www.cpantesters.org/author/K/KRYDE-nopass.rss',
rss_newest_only => 10);
Or it can be a string giving a period of time. Only items newer than this
are taken
"60 minutes"
"1 hour" "36 hours"
"1 day" "2 days"
"1 day" "2 days"
"1 month" "5 months"
"1 year" "0.75 years"
C<rss_newest_only> can be good if you're only interested in the most recent
item from a status or weather feed, or if you only want to get a few items
as a random taste of a feed.
If a feed goes back further than the news server retains then giving a
period such as "90 days" or whatever corresponding to the server time will
prevent old articles being re-added when the server discards them. (It'd be
better if the news server could be asked for its retention time, but this
option here is better than nothing.)
=item $html_extract_main (default 0, false)
=item C<fetch_html ("group", "url", html_extract_main =E<gt> 1)>
=item C<fetch_rss ("group", "url", html_extract_main =E<gt> 1)>
Use L<HTML::ExtractMain> on downloaded HTML to pick out the "main" text from
the page. For C<fetch_rss()> this is applied to downloaded link parts
(C<rss_get_links> above). C<HTML::ExtractMain> version 0.63 or higher is
required.
This is good for removing boilerplate headers or side columns on a page.
For reading text those things tend to waste space and often look
particularly poor from a non-tables renderer such as C<HTML::FormatText> or
C<lynx>.
The algorithm in C<HTML::ExtractMain> is a simple paragraph scoring system
(as of its version 0.63). It does a surprisingly good job but you might
check how much it discards, in case something good was not reckoned part of
the main text. Option value "attach_full" includes the full page as an
attachment
$html_extract_main = 'attach_full';
=back
=head2 Obscure Options
=over 4
=item $user_agent (string, default undef)
=item C<fetch_rss ("group", "url", user_agent =E<gt> "string")>
=item C<fetch_html ("group", "url", user_agent =E<gt> "string")>
Set the C<User-Agent> string which RSS2Leafnode reports in its download
requests. The default is RSS2Leafnode and LWP version numbers,
RSS2Leafnode/123 libwww-perl/456
Occasionally a HTTP server will look at the C<User-Agent> and do something
different or perhaps even allow access only for certain kinds of clients.
Generally speaking this is very bad. The C<user_agent> option here lets
RSS2Leafnode masquerade as some other client, for instance as a browser if a
server will only speak properly to a browser.
$user_agent = 'Mosaic/1.0';
If the string ends with a space then L<LWP::UserAgent> will append itself to
the string.
=item $rss_charset_override (string, default undef)
=item C<fetch_rss ("group", "url", rss_charset_override =E<gt> "CHARSET")>
If set then force RSS content to be interpreted in this charset,
irrespective of what the document says. See L<XML::Parser/ENCODINGS> for
the charsets supported (it has some builtins and then F<.enc> files under
F</usr/lib/perl5/XML/Parser/Encodings/>).
Use this option if the document is wrong, or if it has no charset specified
and isn't the XML default UTF-8. Usually you'll only want this for a
particular offending feed. For example,
# AIR is latin-1, but doesn't have a <?xml> saying that
fetch_rss ('r2l.finance',
'http://www.aireview.com.au/rss.php',
rss_charset_override => 'iso-8859-1');
By default RSS2Leafnode tries to cope with bad multibyte sequences by
re-coding to the feed's claimed charset. If that works then the text will
have some substitute characters (either U+FFFD or question marks "?") and a
warning is given like
Feed http://example.org/feed.xml
recoded utf-8 to parse, expect substitutions for bad non-ascii
(line 214, column 75, byte 13196)
Bad single-byte codings generally aren't detected and will just go through
to display something incorrect (eg. if MS-DOS codepage 1252 used where
Latin-1 is claimed). Nose around the raw feed to see where it goes wrong.
=item $html_charset_from_content (default 0)
=item C<fetch_rss ("group", "url", html_charset_from_content =E<gt> H)>
=item C<fetch_html ("group", "url", html_charset_from_content =E<gt> H)>
If true then the charset used for HTML content is taken from the HTML
itself, rather than the server's HTTP headers. Normally the server should
be believed, but if a particular server is misconfigured then you can try
this.
fetch_html ('r2l.stuff',
'http://www.somebadserver.com/newspage.html',
html_charset_from_content => 1);
=back
=head2 Config Extent
Variables take effect from the point they're set, through to the end of the
file, or until a new setting.
Options like C<render =E<gt> 'lynx'> in a particular C<fetch_rss()> or
C<fetch_html()> override the global settings, just for that call.
The Perl C<local> feature and a braces block can confine a variable setting
to a group of particular feeds. Eg.
{ local $rss_get_links = 1;
fetch_rss ('r2l.debian',
'http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/dwn.en.rdf');
fetch_rss ('r2l.finance',
...);
}
=head2 Emacs
In Emacs, F<.rss2leafnode.conf> can be put into C<perl-mode> with the usual
mode setup in the file
# -*- mode: perl-mode -*-
Or an C<auto-mode-alist> setup in your F<.emacs>,
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist
'("/\\.rss2leafnode\\.conf\\'" . perl-mode))
The Debian package of C<rss2leafnode> has this setup, plus a completions
ignore for the C<.rss2leafnode.status> file. See
F</etc/emacs/site-start.d/50rss2leafnode.el> in the package, or
F<debian/emacsen-startup> in the RSS2Leafnode sources.
=head1 OTHER DETAILS
Non-ascii RSS text, Atom text and rendered HTML text are coded as UTF-8 in
the generated messages so for non-ascii content you'll need a newsreader
which supports that. Unrendered HTML is left in the charset the server
gave, to ensure it matches any C<< <meta http-equiv> >> in the document. In
all cases the charset is specified in the MIME message headers or attachment
parts. Transfer coding in the message body is chosen by C<MIME::Entity>
which normally means quoted-printable if any non-ascii or any very long
lines. Atom C<< <content> >> already in base64 is left that way.
Links are shown at the end of each message for
<link> RSS and Atom
<enclosure> RSS
<comments> RSS
<content> Atom externals, except other XML feeds
<source> RSS and Atom
<prism:url>
<sioc:has_creator>
<sioc:has_discussion>
<sioc:links_to>
<sioc:reply_of>
<wfw:comment> well-formed web
<wiki:diff>
<wiki:history>
Author <url> Atom and wiki, not downloaded
Comment or reply links show a count of replies from any of
<thr:total>
<link count="123" attribute
<link thr:count="123" attribute
<slash:comments> sub-element of <comments>
RSS comment feeds for C<$rss_get_comments> are as follows. "appication" is
a mis-spelling from WordPress pre 2.5 still sometimes found in use (as of
Oct 2012).
<wfw:commentRss>
<link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' ...>
<link rel='replies' type='appication/atom+xml' ...>
Comments links are shown as "Replies" or "RSS Replies". If an RSS comment
feed hasn't been detected as RSS it may show up as plain "Replies" instead
of "RSS Replies". In that case it won't be downloaded by the
C<rss_get_comments> option.
C<< <media:group> >> links are shown as blocks of links. Not sure about the
quality of the formatting yet, and they're not downloaded by
C<rss_get_links>.
Common Alerts Protocol (CAP) fields for weather alerts etc are shown if
present (eg. from the US NOAA). This can have more detail than just the
text. Pseudo-link footnotes are shown for
<geo:lat>,<geo:long>
<geo:Point>
<georss:point>
<statusnet:origin> possibly with URL target too
<media:credit>
<re:rank>
<hlxcd:helex-company-data> symbol and name
Unrecognised item fields are shown in XML at the end of the message. This
is a bit technical but tries not to drop information and might suggest extra
things RSS2Leafnode could present or interpret.
An attempt is made to repair bad XML from a feed with C<XML::Liberal> if you
have that module. It uses C<XML::LibXML> and the C<libxml> library and
often succeeds on annoying things like bad C<&foo;> entities, at least
enough to present something. On hopelessly malformed data it might be a bit
slow.
The most common XML problem is too much or too little C<&foo;> entity
escaping. Too little can turn HTML markup into nested XML elements.
RSS2Leafnode attempts to treat that as if it was XHTML style sub-elements
but the result is likely to be imperfect. Too much escaping results in raw
or semi-raw HTML C<< <p> >> or C<&foo;> coming through. C<'> may be
from XHTML instead of HTML, though many browsers support that entity anyway.
Perhaps an option for extra unescaping could improve some bad feeds but in
practice is unlikely to be wholly successful. Every bad feed tends to be
bad in its own special way.
=head2 Message Headers
For reference the message headers fields are generated roughly as follows,
=over
=item From:
First non-empty of
<author>
<jf:author>
<slate:author>
<dc:creator>
<dc:contributor>
<wiki:username>
<itunes:author>
<managingEditor>
<webMaster>
<dc:publisher>
<itunes:owner>
channel <title>
The C<dc> bits in RDF might have sub-elements
C<< <rdf:description><rdf:value> >> containing the actual text.
<dc:contributor>
<rdf:Description ...>
<rdf:value>Joe Bloggs</rdf:value>
</rdf:Description>
</dc:contributor>
Atom has C<< <name> >> and C<< <email> >> sub-elements.
C<< <itunes:owner> >> may have an C<< <itunes:email> >> sub-element. Such
sub-elements are checked without worrying whether the feed is supposed to be
Atom or RSS etc. If there's no email in the item but the name matches the
channel C<owner> then the email is taken from there. When there's no
sub-elements the text is free-form and might be things like
Name
Name <foo@example.com>
foo@example.com (Name)
If there's no identifiable email mailbox part in the text and no
C<< <email> >> element then C<nobody@HOSTNAME> is added to make a valid RFC
822 address.
The channel C<< <title> >> as a final fallback is meant to at least show
something about where the message came from if there's no author identified.
An author C<< <url> >> is shown in the message links as described above.
C<< <dc:creator> >> can appear multiple times for multiple authors. They're
combined as a multiple C<From> per RFC 5322, but currently without
attempting to pick out a C<Sender:> from among them. Atom feeds can have
multiple C<< <contributor> >> but for now only the primary author or authors
are shown.
=item Subject:
First present of
<title>
<dc:title>
<dc:subject>
C<< <dc:subject> >> is normally only a keyword but might be better than
nothing.
=item Date:
First present of
<pubDate>
<dc:date>
<jf:creationDate>
<modified>
<updated>
<issued>
<dcterms:issued>
<created>
<lastBuildDate>
<published>
<prism:publicationDate>
C<dc:date> is ISO format "2000-01-01T12:00:00Z" etc and anything in that
form is converted to RFC 822 style for the messages. An unrecognised form
is put through unmodified.
C<< <jf:creationDate> >> is not used. It's apparently meant to be
locale-based for human readability and is probably accompanied by
C<< <pubDate> >> anyway so not needed.
=item Date-Received:
The date/time when C<rss2leafnode> made the message.
=item Message-ID:
First of
<id> (Atom)
<guid isPermaLink="true">
<link> Yahoo Finance special case
<guid isPermaLink="false"> and feed URL
MD5 hash of various fields and feed URL
Yahoo Finance items repeated in different feeds are noticed using a special
match of the C<< <link> >> so that just one copy is posted. (As of March
2010 those items don't offer RSS C<guid> identifiers.)
=item Keywords:
All of
<category>
<itunes:category>
<cap:category>
<itunes:keywords>
<media:keywords>
<dc:subject>
<slash:section>
<slate:topic>
The sub-category system of C<< <itunes:category> >> is not currently put
through.
Some blog feeds have a big set of categories, maybe an aggregate of
everything in the blog or some such, making an unattractively long
C<Keywords:> header. It's kept in full for the sake of completeness, but if
viewing it in a newsreader then some sort of line limit might be wanted.
=item In-Reply-To:
C<< <thr:in-reply-to> >> elements (per RFC 4685) turned into Message-IDs the
same way as an Atom <id>. This might help thread display in a news reader
if the parent item was downloaded too.
C<< <sioc:reply_of> >> is not used. It'd be a possibility, but would
probably need a hard-coded mapping of URL to Message-ID. For now it's just
shown as a link as described above.
=item Content-Location:
The URL of a C<fetch_html()> or a C<$get_links> attachment part. Good
newsreaders can use this to resolve relative links in a HTML part.
This same URL and any C<xml:base> attribute is used as a C<< <base
href=""> >> when making a HTML fragment, so the location is present when
saving a message body and when rendering it to plain text.
=item Content-Language:
First of
<language>
<dc:language>
<twitter:lang>
xml:lang=""
HTTP response Content-Language header
C<xml:lang> is the standard XML attribute present on any element and
sometimes found on Atom C<< <content> >> text.
The language code is also added to a generated HTML body in HTML4 style, but
whether any renderers/browsers do much with it is another matter.
<html lang="en">
=item Content-MD5:
From the corresponding HTTP header of a C<fetch_html()> or C<$get_links>
download part, though in practice this is almost never sent by HTTP servers.
=item Importance:
=item Priority:
These headers are only supposed to be for X.400 inter-operation. Common
Alerts Protocol and Wiki (L<http://www.meatballwiki.org/wiki/ModWiki>) are
treated as
<cap:severity> "Extreme" and "Severe"
-> "Importance: high" and "Priority: urgent"
<wiki:importance> "minor"
-> "Importance: low"
=item Precedence:
"list" for certain Google Groups lists, identified by their link URLs per
C<List-Post> below. Perhaps other feeds which come from mailing lists could
be identified too.
=item Face:
Per the C<$get_icons> option described above, the first item or channel
element
<image> RSS
<icon> Atom
<logo> Atom
<itunes:image>
<statusnet:postIcon>
<media:thumbnail>
<activity:actor><link rel="avatar">
<author><gd:image>
HTML favicon for fetch_html()
Gnus and perhaps other newsreaders can display C<Face:>, see
L<http://quimby.gnus.org/circus/face>.
It'd be possible to generate an C<X-Face:> as well or instead, but
C<X-Face:> is black and white and converting a colour image from the feeds
is unlikely to look good.
=item List-Post:
Mailbox of a Google Groups mailing list feeds such as
L<http://groups.google.com/group/cake-php/feed/rss_v2_0_msgs.xml>. This may
help post a followup to the list, depending on the newsreader. (A followup
to an C<rss2leafnode> newsgroup will normally go nowhere.)
=item PICS-Label:
Channel C<< <rating> >>. Perhaps C<< <itunes:explicit> >> or
C<< <media:adult> >> could be turned into a rating too.
=item X-Mailer:
"RSS2Leafnode/VERSION" plus the usual from C<MIME::Entity> (see
L<MIME::Entity/build PARAMHASH>).
=item X-Copyright:
An RSS2Leafnode extension, being all of following. See L</Copyright> above.
<rights> Atom
<copyright> RSS
<dc:rights>
<dcterms:license>
<creativeCommons:license>
<link rel="license" href="..."> Atom
These are sought in the channel, the item, and also any Atom style
C<< <source> >> within the item.
=item X-RSS-Url:
An RSS2Leafnode extension, being the originating C<fetch_rss()> feed URL
downloaded. This is handy if an item has come out badly and you want to
check the raw feed.
=item X-RSS-Generator:
An RSS2Leafnode extension, being the channel C<< <generator> >>. This might
help assign blame for bad feed content etc.
=back
Of course all this conversion and endless variant DTDs wouldn't be necessary
if RSS had been news in the first place. A news server already serves short
messages, either read-only or with followups, and if news servers hadn't
gained a well-deserved reputation for being a pain to administer, and if
news hadn't been based on transferring gigabytes of "full feed" instead of
by demand, then RSS might never have been wanted. Of course the other side
is that if you're a web page author accustomed to HTTP then everything looks
like a HTTP and if you like HTML then a ridiculous edifice like XML to
encapsulate a half dozen lines of text might even seem like a good idea.
=head1 BUGS
The way Message-IDs are checked on the news server means that the server
should be setup to retain messages for at least as long as the feed retains
items, or as long as the C<rss_newest_only> option you select for the feed.
If that's not so then old articles will be re-posted by the next
C<fetch_rss()> and will look like new articles to a newsreader. (Letting
the news server track articles keeps down the amount of state
C<rss2leafnode> must maintain and means multiple users can insert a feed
without duplication.)
No retries are attempted if a news server disconnects, at least not unless
posting to a different news server then coming back. Not sure if that's
good or bad, but the current repeated error messages for a disconnect are
unattractive. The intention for the future is to attempt a reconnect.
Some pre-releases of leafnode 2 might have trouble posting to local
newsgroups while a C<fetchnews> run is in progress. When this happens the
local articles don't show up until after a subsequent further C<fetchnews>.
Or was this only for the C<rnews> inject?
No attention is paid to C<< <atom:updated> >> or other changes in an item.
Should an updated item be re-posted? Is the C<Supersedes:> header better,
to replace the article? Something allowing readers to see or not see
updates according to user preference might be good. Currently the item is
reposted if C<< <atom:id> >> changes or if there's no C<id> and the content
changes enough to make a new MD5 hash. Is C<id> supposed to stay the same
for an update?
The way C<$rss_get_links> only gets the immediate link target could perhaps
be extended to fetch images or frame sub-parts etc of a HTML page and
include them in the message as RFC 2557 style "MHTML". But do any news
readers actually display that?
Perhaps there should be a limit on the size of links to be downloaded.
Sometimes podcast links have both a html page and a full audio link. If the
audio is bigger than some threshold then might like to download the html but
not the audio.
The entire XML feed is read into memory, which might be a little too much
for large feeds. RSS was conceived as a "site summary" but is used for
bigger content too. Twig has a partial-tree parse for one item at a time,
though applying the C<rss_newest_only> option would require a first pass to
choose items. A progressive parse might help show the first few items if
there's a fatal syntax error or truncation part-way through. Some care
would be needed that small changes by the automated charset recoding or by
C<XML::Liberal> doesn't cause duplicated posts.
=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
=over 4
=item C<NNTPSERVER>
=item C<NEWSHOST>
Default news server as per C<Net::NNTP>. If unset then C<localhost> is
used.
=back
=head1 FILES
=over 4
=item F<~/.rss2leafnode.conf>
Configuration file.
=item F<~/.rss2leafnode.status>
Status file, recording "last modified" dates for downloads. This can be
deleted if something bad seems to have happened to it; the next
C<rss2leafnode> run will recreate it.
=item F</etc/perl/Net/libnet.cfg>
=item F<~/.libnet.cfg>
Defaults per C<Net::NNTP> and C<Net::Config>.
=back
=head1 SEE ALSO
L<leafnode(8)>,
L<HTML::FormatText>, L<HTML::FormatText::WithLinks>, L<HTML::FormatExternal>,
L<lynx(1)>,
L<URI::Title>, L<XML::Parser>, L<XML::Liberal>, L<Image::Magick>,
C<Net::NNTP>, C<Net::Config>
L<Plagger>, L<feed2imap(1)>, L<rss2email(1)>, L<rssdrop(1)>, L<toursst(1)>,
L<http://www.gwene.org>
=head1 HOME PAGE
L<http://user42.tuxfamily.org/rss2leafnode/index.html>
=head1 LICENSE
Copyright 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017 Kevin Ryde
RSS2Leafnode is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option) any later
version.
RSS2Leafnode is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for
more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
RSS2Leafnode. If not, see L<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
=cut