Is there anyway to get current news on a Synchronet BBS such as CNN or NYtimes or any news provider? A "News" door doesn't exist? Games are the only doors available?


HusTler
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Re: New Feed
By: HusTler to All on Fri May 31 2019 07:36:21

Is there anyway to get current news on a Synchronet BBS such as CNN or NYtimes or any news provider? A "News" door doesn't exist? Games are the only doors available?

There are some "doors" that aren't games, but none of them provide current affairs info as far as I know. Could end up being a bunch of work just to reimplement a newspaper's website in textmode. A feed (JSON or RSS likely) would be needed, and then you could just import that into a message area (and maybe spur some discussion) rather than have a dedicated external program for this purpose.

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Re: New Feed
By: echicken to HusTler on Fri May 31 2019 02:01 pm

There are some "doors" that aren't games, but none of them provide current affairs info as far as I know. Could end up being a bunch of work just to reimplement a newspaper's website in textmode. A feed (JSON or RSS likely) would be needed, and then you could just import that into a message area (and maybe spur some discussion) rather than have a dedicated external program for this purpose.

You could probably also set up a text-based web browser (such as Lynx) as a door if you wanted to.

Nightfox

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Re: New Feed
By: Nightfox to echicken on Fri May 31 2019 11:21:25

You could probably also set up a text-based web browser (such as Lynx) as a door if you wanted to.

A pretty unpleasant experience on most modern websites, especially at 80x24. (Though some sites offer a 'simplified' view like http://lite.cnn.io/en which might be okay.)

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Re: New Feed
By: echicken to HusTler on Fri May 31 2019 02:01 pm

Is there anyway to get current news on a Synchronet BBS such as CNN
or NYtimes or any news provider? A "News" door doesn't exist? Games

affairs info as far as I know. Could end up being a bunch of work just to reimplement a newspaper's website in textmode. A feed (JSON or RSS likely) would be needed, and then you could just import that into a message area

I read today that NPR now supports JSON. Does that make it easier?

HusTler
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Re: New Feed
By: HusTler to echicken on Fri May 31 2019 17:32:22

I read today that NPR now supports JSON. Does that make it easier?

Yes and no?

RSS and Atom are well-defined specs. In that sense they're good because a script that imports either of those would work with any compatible feed. Working with XML in JS for Synchronet isn't great, but I already did that work, so meh.

JSON is easy to work with in JS. That's good. What's bad is that NPR and everyone else might have invented their own format for a JSON feed, and a custom script would be needed for each one. If they're all using some common/standard JSON feed format, that's great - but they probably aren't.

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Re: New Feed
By: echicken to HusTler on Mon Jun 03 2019 10:58 am

I read today that NPR now supports JSON. Does that make it easier?

Yes and no?

RSS and Atom are well-defined specs. In that sense they're good because a script that imports either of those would work with any compatible feed. custom script would be needed for each one. If they're all using some common/standard JSON feed format, that's great - but they probably aren't.

So RSS feeds are no longer standardized like they were years ago? I think the Mystic boards are pulling off NASA. Maybe government feeds are "Standard"? Jeez.. I can still read rss feeds with snownews. I'm not a programmer but these rss readers are ancient yet still work.

HusTler
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Re: New Feed
By: Steven Wolf to echicken on Mon Jun 03 2019 01:52 pm

So RSS feeds are no longer standardized like they were years ago? I think the Mystic boards are pulling off NASA. Maybe government feeds are "Standard"? Jeez.. I can still read rss feeds with snownews. I'm not a programmer but these rss readers are ancient yet still work.

RSS is a standard protocol, as far as I know. I'd think anything that supports the RSS protocol would work. I don't think it makes sense that RSS feeds would be "no longer standardized".

Nightfox

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Re: New Feed
By: Steven Wolf to echicken on Mon Jun 03 2019 13:52:00

RSS and Atom are well-defined specs. In that sense they're good

So RSS feeds are no longer standardized like they were years ago? I think

RSS is as much a standard now as it was years ago.

I think you're using "RSS" as shorthand for "any kind of web-based news feed", and that's not quite right. An RSS feed is XML conforming to the RSS format, so that programs can parse it and find content in predictable places.

Content publishers may publish an RSS feed, or publish their data in some other format, or publish feeds in multiple formats. All of these are "feeds", but not all are RSS.

Anyway, it appears that NPR uses "JSON Feed". This standard is relatively new (two years old). I hadn't heard of it before. It seems to serve the same purpose as RSS, but uses JSON instead of XML. That's great. My fear was that various sites were/are just cooking up their own formats and each one would need special handling. A "JSON Feed" parser would work with any site that follows this standard, just as an RSS parser does with RSS.

The name "JSON Feed" is deeply unfortunate, however. The capital F makes all the difference. Any feed of data expressed as JSON is a "JSON feed", but not every such feed is a "JSON Feed". The name is a bit too on the nose and they should've tried harder.

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Re: New Feed
By: echicken to Steven Wolf on Mon Jun 03 2019 03:19 pm

RSS and Atom are well-defined specs. In that sense they're good

I think you're using "RSS" as shorthand for "any kind of web-based news feed", and that's not quite right. An RSS feed is XML conforming to the

new (two years old). I hadn't heard of it before. It seems to serve the same purpose as RSS, but uses JSON instead of XML. That's great. My fear

Thank you for that detailed explanation. Thats why I stopped working on web pages. It was very fustrating when the page stopped working the way it did when I created it 6 months later. Customers calling and bithing.like they had a lifetime warranty on the darn thing. I totally get where you're coming from. Personal satisfaction will only get you so far :-)

HusTler
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