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Comment by abetusk | Hacker News Reader

RSS feeds in JSON [0].

Personally, I think this is great but I doubt very much it will catch on. For anything XML related, I convert to JSON [1] and then parse with jq [2], including (especially) my own personal RSS feed.

My opinion is that JSON fulfilled the promise of XML (ubiquitous, self document human readable data) but it came too late for many standards that used XML and now we're kind of stuck with it. JSON has it's problems (not streamable, not easily commentable, any schemas needed are tacked on, etc.) but it's so much easier to work with than anything XML related.

[0] https://www.jsonfeed.org/version/1.1/

[1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/xml2json

[2] https://stedolan.github.io/jq/

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> I doubt very much it will catch on.

There’s little incentive for websites to change to JSON feeds when their RSS feeds are already implemented, working well, and generated automatically. But several good RSS readers added support for JSON feeds when the format was introduced and that’s all you need for it to be viable; it isn’t important if it “catches on” after that when the flexibility is there.

JSON feeds were great for me because I generate my own feeds for personal consumption and can now do so with simpler code. I understand I’m in a minority—most people consume feeds and never create their own—but the larger point is JSON feeds may have already done their job: they exist and are supported if you need them.

> but I doubt very much it will catch on

JSON Feed was very much a flash in the pan. Big noise when it first came out, few places added it, then silence and almost-abandoned Github repo with suggestions for improvements/fixes being ignored. Visible on the site: 2017, then first small update in 2020. That IMHO killed any chance at momentum.

It was clear in the way the authors responded to both criticism and improvement of the spec that they would be even worse stewards than Winer, Crockford or Gruber. I am glad this had its deserved death before it became entrenched.

HN readers, learn from this. When you produce a spec, abandon ego, and cultivate the spec like you would a child.

Maybe there's still hope for some stewardship of feeds. I have some ideas I'm playing with. I think the key is not leaving the past behind, but also not being limited by it.

You were really bad at handling the RSS spec. Your boundless ego got in everyone's way, and in the end you left everyone disappointed: the feed subscribers, the Web authors, the library implementers. Shame on you. It was so bad that people got together and made a whole new set of specs because it was literally impossible to salvage RSS.

hmm. RSS worked pretty well for something that needed salvaging, as you say.

the mess was created by vendors who wouldn't work with each other.

i stepped back after 2.0, people could've done anything they wanted.

Ah yes, blaming someone else, when we have have historic records that it was you who is responsible. Who do you hope to make an impression on with your lies? You haven't changed one bit.

• http://p3rl.org/XML::RAI#DESCRIPTION

• https://web.archive.org/web/2004/http://diveintomark.org/arc...

(For those following along, Userland ⩵ Winer.)

I like the first document, circa 2009. We were doing the same thing in Frontier at the time, because as the author says, it all was a bit of a mess.

I use the feedparser package in my JS work written by my friend Dan MacTough, that hides the differences between all flavors of RSS, RDF and Atom.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/feedparser

I don't know what role you think I played in RSS, but I never had the power to change what people were doing. I could only do things in my own software and with publishing partners.

I had influence only because I had (at the time) popular products and some good ideas (like podcasting).

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