February 19, 2006

A Tragedy? A Triumph? In The End, Its Up To You...

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Why IE 7 Can't Import OPML Files from RSS Bandit

Recently there was a question asked on the RSS Bandit forums from a user who was Unable to Import RSSBandit-Exported OPML into IE7. The question goes

... just like every other question to every other feed reader forum on the planet...

"Why can't I import/export my OPML files!!!???"

The answer:

OPML is not only *not* XML, in many ways it's not even text!

So here's this particular poor unfortunate victim's story:

I exported my feeds from RSSBandit 1.3.0.42 to an OPML file in hopes of trying the feed support in IE7. IE7 seems to try to import, but ultimately tells me no feeds were imported. The exported file must have over a 100 feeds, so it's not that. Has anyone else been able to import feeds from [deleted RSSBandit as this applies to EVERY feed reader] into [deleted IE7 as this applies to any attempt whatsover to try and make sense of that OPML nastiness!]?

Apparently Dare was able to get some info from the IE7 folks:

I got an answer for why this is the case from the Internet Explorer's RSS team. The reason is provided in the the RSS Bandit bug report, Support type="rss" for export of feeds, where I found out that somewhere along the line someone came up with the convention of adding a type="rss" attribute to indicate which were the RSS feeds in an OPML file. The Internet Explorer RSS team has decided to enforce this convention for indicating RSS feeds in an OPML file and will ignore entries that don't have this annotation.

*THANK GOD!!!* Maybe this will finally be enough to get people to start looking for other ways to gain access to their stored feed index inside 'XYZ' feed reader. I've pointed at Uche's post regarding his IRC-based community open forum research project to seek out a replacement for OPML .several times before, but if I knew that it would ultimatelly lead to the death of OPML, I would build a bot to make a post every hour on the hour, on every blog I am currently active in making posts to which, at present time, is six.

What would the post say? Well, similar to an OPML file, it would be a series of random glyphs that had no rhyme, reason, order, or any other recongizable pattern of any sort that would then state:

Each day 100's of millions of glyphs like those pictured above are ripped away from their friends, family, and loved ones and forced into a life which can be described in no other way than that of the ultimate anti-life, the darkest of all dark-matter, the bitter gall of Hell's own fury:

OPML.

Yeah, I know... it's hard to even think about...

I'll give you a moment to collect yourself.

[MOMENT]

Be strong my friend, be strong!

[DEEP BREATH]
[HEAVY LONG EXHALE]
[SHED A TEAR]
[PULL IT BACK]
[SNIFF]
[COLLECT YOURSELF]
[PAUSE]
[and...]

For the price of fifteen minutes taken from your lunch break, you could write a parser that could mean the difference between life...

And OPML.

All it takes in one click.

One click and you could help save the life of *MILLIONS upon MILLIONS* of glyphs who would otherwise be thrust into that that bitter bit bucket of no return; the bit torrent black hole from Hell; Thats right:

/dev/null

And yet some say they have it lucky! In fact many have begged for a such a wonderful ending to such a tragic story, for they know that if not /dev/null then this can only mean something much more awful, much more painful, a much slower, darker, nastier, and horrific end to a life that once held so much hope! To just such a life, what they now face is altogether the ultimate insult to any good God-fearing glyph with any sense of dignity, pride, who once lived a life of romance and passion, with dreams of fulfilling their life's destiny of living inside the glorius pages of a wonderful, glorius book who's pages will be read from over, and over, and over again, bringing a new spark of pride each and every time the eyes of their reader is emblazened with the glory of their printed impression. Instead, they now know that its only a matter of time before they face:

The Windows Recycle Bin.

HAVE YOU NO SHAME!!!!!!!!!!! MAKE THE FUCKING CLICK!!!!

Thank you for your support.

What a tragedy. And to think, you.

YES YOU!

YOU could help turn this potential tragedy into a powerful triumph over the Evil one Itself:

OPML.

Please make the click. Uche's Web Server is standing by.

Make the click.

Thankyou.