Noobish question: why doesn't nnrss display anything?

Noobish question: why doesn't nnrss display anything?

[Joseph Barillari]

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Hi.

I'm having some trouble with nnrss. 

If I hit `B <ret> nnrss <ret>', I get the nnrss URL prompt. 

I'll enter something like:

http://boingboing.net/rss.xml <ret>

If I answer 'n' to "fetch extra categories? ", then I'm dropped into
an empty gnus-browse-server buffer. The message log indicates:

Connecting to http://boingboing.net/rss.xml...
Reading active file...done
Connecting to http://boingboing.net/rss.xml...done

I'm not even sure that it's connecting to boingboing, much less
reading the rss file. Why? If I /don't/ enter a URL, and just say 'y
to "fetch extra categories? ", I get:

Connecting to ...
Opening nnrss server...done
Reading active file...
Contacting host: w.moreover.com:80
Reading active file...done
Connecting to ...done

.../et voila!/ Something actually shows up in the buffer:

<snip>
K      0: Companies.Boeing news
K      0: Companies.Caterpillar Inc news
K      0: Companies.Citigroup news
K      0: Companies.Coca-Cola news
<snip>

Do you know how I might diagnose this? It might be a problem with one
of the support libraries on which nnrss relies, in which case, I'd
probably have to do a step-by-step trace.

Thanks in advance,

--Joe

P.S.: If Shenghuo Zhu is on this list, please accept my compliments for
      implementing another reason to never leave gnus.

-- 
Joseph Barillari -- http://barillari.org

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Re: Noobish question: why doesn't nnrss display anything?

[Mark A. Hershberger]

Joseph Barillari <jbarilla@princeton.edu> writes:

> If I hit `B <ret> nnrss <ret>', I get the nnrss URL prompt. 

You've hit a bug.  That method doesn't work as expected.

Try "G R url RET" in the *Group* buffer instead.

> P.S.: If Shenghuo Zhu is on this list, please accept my compliments for
>       implementing another reason to never leave gnus.

FWIW, I've done most of the recent work on nnrss.  And I'm probably to
blame for this breakage.

Mark.

-- 
You are a mystery as deep as the sea; the more I search, the more
I find, and the more I find the more I search for you.
	    -- St. Catherine of Siena

Re: Noobish question: why doesn't nnrss display anything?

[Joseph Barillari]

>>>>> "MAH" == Mark A Hershberger <mah@everybody.org> writes:

    MAH> Joseph Barillari <jbarilla@princeton.edu> writes:
    >> If I hit `B <ret> nnrss <ret>', I get the nnrss URL prompt. 

    MAH> You've hit a bug.  That method doesn't work as expected.

    MAH> Try "G R url RET" in the *Group* buffer instead.

Thanks. That took care of the subscription problem, but another one
arose:

As suggested in http://my.gnus.org/Lisp/1031707976, I have (setq
nnrss-use-local t) in my .gnus. I used nnrss-generate-download-script
to generate a shell-script to fetch the feeds, and I have a cron job
that runs that shell script. The shell script works.

The trouble is that nnrss doesn't update the .el files corresponding
to the .xml files when I hit `g' to get new news. It's clearly doing
_something_ with them, for `g' takes a few seconds with the nnrss
groups subscribed (rather than a fraction of a second if I unsubscribe
from them).

Result: the .xml files have new articles, the .el files have old
articles, and so do the summary buffers for the group.

Any suggestions on how I might diagnose this? 

Thanks in advance,

--Joe


    >> P.S.: If Shenghuo Zhu is on this list, please accept my compliments for
    >> implementing another reason to never leave gnus.

    MAH> FWIW, I've done most of the recent work on nnrss.  And I'm probably to
    MAH> blame for this breakage.

Regardless of the breakage, thanks for the code. It's a very cool idea.

-- 
Joseph Barillari -- http://barillari.org

Re: Noobish question: why doesn't nnrss display anything?

[Alex Schroeder]

mah@everybody.org (Mark A. Hershberger) writes:

> FWIW, I've done most of the recent work on nnrss.  And I'm probably to
> blame for this breakage.

I'd be interested in fixing my RSS output -- at the moment nnrss
doesn't show anything too exciting for the following URL:
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?action=rss

Do you have any idea?

Alex.
-- 
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/alex.pl

Re: Noobish question: why doesn't nnrss display anything?

[Mark A. Hershberger]

Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org> writes:

> http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?action=rss
>
> Do you have any idea?

Right now, the elements that it looks at are kind of restricted.  I'm
currently adding support for more elements, though, so I can certainly
have nnrss fall-back to <dc:contributor>.  I need to do better date
parsing so that <pubDate> and <dc:date> are both supported better
(they use RFC822 and ISO date formats, respectively).  I suppose I'll
have to find out what Gnus knows about dates.

Other than that, what more do you want?  I'm sure we could add support
for the wiki namespace, but I don't know what to do with it.  Give me
an idea of what you want.

Mark.

-- 
As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery
you create morbidity.			     -- G.K. Chesterson

Re: Noobish question: why doesn't nnrss display anything?

[Alex Schroeder]

mah@everybody.org (Mark A. Hershberger) writes:

> Right now, the elements that it looks at are kind of restricted.  I'm
> currently adding support for more elements, though, so I can certainly
> have nnrss fall-back to <dc:contributor>.  I need to do better date
> parsing so that <pubDate> and <dc:date> are both supported better
> (they use RFC822 and ISO date formats, respectively).  I suppose I'll
> have to find out what Gnus knows about dates.
>
> Other than that, what more do you want?  I'm sure we could add support
> for the wiki namespace, but I don't know what to do with it.  Give me
> an idea of what you want.

Heh.  I was actually trying to figure out what stuff I (being the
author of the software producing the RSS output via XML::RSS Perl
module) could add to my RSS output to make it appear better in Gnus.
My CVS Gnus is a few weeks old, I think.  This is what the summary
buffer looks like:

 .+ 01-Jan  n/a [nobody                 ] IbufferMode
 .+ 01-Jan  n/a [nobody                 ] LucasBonnet
 .+ 01-Jan  n/a [nobody                 ] WThreeM
 .+ 01-Jan  n/a [nobody                 ] WThreeMFrames
 .+ 01-Jan  n/a [nobody                 ] CategoryModes
 .+ 01-Jan  n/a [nobody                 ] WThreeMTypeAhead
 .+ 01-Jan  n/a [nobody                 ] MpthreePlayer
 .+ 01-Jan  n/a [nobody                 ] BiblMode
 .+ 01-Jan  n/a [nobody                 ] AutoInsertMode

The question is therefore, what must I add in order to have correct
dates and author, and what could I add to produce an interesting
output for the size?

Hm, perhaps it looks better in your Gnus?  I use the following
summary line format:

(setq gnus-summary-line-format "%U%R%z %d %4k %I%(%[%-23,23f%]%) %s\n")

The posting itself looks as follows:

    Subject: IbufferMode
    Newsgroups: EmacsWiki
    Date: 2003-05-12T08:34:00+00:00

    it's in neither 21.2 nor 21.3

    link

In this case, the "link" looks promising -- but I cannot click it.
What must I add to the RSS feed to have a clickable link, here?

Alex.
-- 
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/alex.pl

Re: Noobish question: why doesn't nnrss display anything?

[Mark A. Hershberger]

Your screen looks the same as mine.

Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org> writes:

> The question is therefore, what must I add in order to have correct
> dates and author, and what could I add to produce an interesting
> output for the size?

I'll add support for the dates and author fields you use.  But, off
hand, you could use <pubDate> and <author>.

> In this case, the "link" looks promising -- but I cannot click it.
> What must I add to the RSS feed to have a clickable link, here?

CVS nnrss produces a multipart/alternative message with one text/plain
part and one text/html part.  It looks like you have something
rendering your html that doesn't give you links.  Try w3.el or w3m.el
to get the links.  (There is a patch for w3m to make links act
"better" than they do in 1.3.3, but even that works.)

Hope that helps,

Mark.

-- 
As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery
you create morbidity.			     -- G.K. Chesterson

Re: Noobish question: why doesn't nnrss display anything?

[Alex Schroeder]

mah@everybody.org (Mark A. Hershberger) writes:

> CVS nnrss produces a multipart/alternative message with one text/plain
> part and one text/html part.  It looks like you have something
> rendering your html that doesn't give you links.  Try w3.el or w3m.el
> to get the links.  (There is a patch for w3m to make links act
> "better" than they do in 1.3.3, but even that works.)

Indeed...  I don't want HTML mail, I want plain text, therefore I use
the following in my .gnus:

;; No HTML mail
(setq mm-discouraged-alternatives '("text/html" "text/richtext"))
;; my lynx cannot handle the -stdin option, use true w3m (not w3m
;; mode!) instead
(require 'mm-view)
(setq mm-text-html-renderer 'true-w3m)
(add-to-list 'mm-text-html-renderer-alist
	     '(true-w3m mm-inline-render-with-stdin
			nil "w3m" "-T" "text/html"))
(add-to-list 'mm-text-html-washer-alist
	     '(true-w3m mm-inline-wash-with-stdin
			nil "w3m" "-T" "text/html"))

Would it be possible to just print the URL in the text part, too?

mah@everybody.org (Mark A. Hershberger) writes:

> I'll add support for the dates and author fields you use.  But, off
> hand, you could use <pubDate> and <author>.

Cool!  I guess I'll just wait, then.


Alex.
-- 
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/alex.pl

Re: Noobish question: why doesn't nnrss display anything?

[Mark A. Hershberger]

Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org> writes:

> Would it be possible to just print the URL in the text part, too?

I do that.  Could you 'C-u g' on the *Article* buffer and send me the
results?

> mah@everybody.org (Mark A. Hershberger) writes:
>
>> I'll add support for the dates and author fields you use.  But, off
>> hand, you could use <pubDate> and <author>.
>
> Cool!  I guess I'll just wait, then.

FWIW, I plan to support the profile currently being discussed at
<http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/1394.html>`.

Mark.

-- 
As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery
you create morbidity.			     -- G.K. Chesterson

Re: Noobish question: why doesn't nnrss display anything?

[Alex Schroeder]

mah@everybody.org (Mark A. Hershberger) writes:

>> Would it be possible to just print the URL in the text part, too?
>
> I do that.  Could you 'C-u g' on the *Article* buffer and send me the
> results?

This is the result:




Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html
Newsgroups: EmacsWiki
Subject: WThreeMFrames
Date: 2003-05-12T13:04:23+00:00
Message-ID: <19@EmacsWiki.nnrss>

New page for rendering frames.

<p><a href='http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?action=browse&id=WThreeMFrames&revision=1'>link</a></p>



This is weird.  It looks liek an HTML-only version passed through w3m
(since that is what I use to render HTML).  Perhaps I should cvs up.

Alex.
-- 
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/alex.pl

Re: Noobish question: why doesn't nnrss display anything?

[Mark A. Hershberger]

Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org> writes:

> This is weird.  It looks liek an HTML-only version passed through w3m
> (since that is what I use to render HTML).  Perhaps I should cvs up.

Yes, the CVS version is text/multipart.

-- 
As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery
you create morbidity.			     -- G.K. Chesterson

nnrss.el

[Alex Schroeder]

I just recently tried to add another RSS feed and failed.  Somehow
the URL I provide is not accepted as a valid RSS feed:

    http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?action=rss

While trying, however, I found a problem in the via-syndic8 defun:
When the code ends with a message, another defun further up uses the
string return value as an alist.  Wrapping the messge in a (progn ...
nil) avoided this particular error for me.

(defun nnrss-find-rss-via-syndic8 (url)
  "query syndic8 for the rss feeds it has for the url."
  (if (not (locate-library "xml-rpc"))
      (message "XML-RPC is not available... not checking Syndic8.")

to

      ...
      (progn (message "XML-RPC is not available... not checking Syndic8.")
             nil)

Alex.
-- 
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/alex.pl

Re: nnrss.el

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org> writes:

> While trying, however, I found a problem in the via-syndic8 defun:
> When the code ends with a message, another defun further up uses the
> string return value as an alist.  Wrapping the messge in a (progn ...
> nil) avoided this particular error for me.

Yup.  Fix in Gnus v5.10.3 (i. e., CVS).

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen