[HN Gopher] Convert Markdown files to RSS feed
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       Convert Markdown files to RSS feed
        
       Author : Rush2112
       Score  : 64 points
       Date   : 2024-08-18 13:09 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | treetalker wrote:
       | Very cool. Big ups for RSS.
       | 
       | Does not currently support ordered or unordered lists.
        
         | prmoustache wrote:
         | The only difference between a rendered and a non rendered list
         | is automatic indentation. It is not a big deal considering
         | markdown was made to be comfortably readable as is. As long as
         | links and images are rendered and you keep your formatting
         | simple without fancy stuff from various markdown extensions, it
         | should be ok for anyone.
        
         | Rush2112 wrote:
         | It still says this in the README yes. But unordered lists
         | should work. I'm still adding things. My view of RSS is
         | somewhat biased because I use newsboat as my RSS reader, which
         | is text only. Feel free to share ideas!
        
       | kitd wrote:
       | Very nice and simple idea!
       | 
       | One question: how are the articles linked in the RSS file? Are
       | they relative to that file and/or assumed to be in the same
       | folder?
        
         | pacifika wrote:
         | From reading the code it seems that all articles permalink to a
         | link configuration value which I take it is handled outside of
         | this tool
        
         | Rush2112 wrote:
         | I hope I understand the question correctly. The markdown files
         | are assumed to be in the same folder. The RSS file can be
         | wherever. This is all handled using a configuration file.
        
       | mro_name wrote:
       | The "Why RSS" doesn't mention why instead of RFC4287 Atom.
        
         | EricE wrote:
         | It was first and thus more broadly supported?
        
           | velcrovan wrote:
           | RSS came out in 1999, Atom in 2005. There's not a meaningful
           | difference in support between the two at this point.
        
             | Tagbert wrote:
             | But RSS gained wide acceptance in that early period. Atom
             | came along later and never seemed to gain as much usage.
             | 
             | People still think of "RSS feeds" and "RSS readers" even if
             | some of those are Atom or at least offer Atom as an option.
        
         | ericjmorey wrote:
         | Name recognition mostly, but you can just call an Atom feed an
         | RSS feed and no one goes to jail for it, so just use the name
         | that gets the results you care about.
        
         | Rush2112 wrote:
         | Hi thanks for this comment. I'll look into Atom a bit more for
         | this tool. Heard a lot about it.
        
       | kokada wrote:
       | I do something similar to my blog, I even wrote an article about
       | it (that is out-of-date, but the idea is the same):
       | https://kokada.capivaras.dev/blog/using-github-as-a-bad-blog....
       | 
       | Basically I write the posts in Markdown, commit them to the
       | repository and it automatically generates a RSS feed and a index
       | in the repository (inside the README.md file), and also publishes
       | the blog posts to https://kokada.capivaras.dev/, that is where
       | the blog actually lives.
        
       | xrd wrote:
       | I assume this is just a bunch of markdown files you want to
       | convert to RSS? I'm struggling to think of why you would want an
       | RSS feed for a bunch of markdown files that were not part of a
       | blog already? Svekyll (my svelte derivative of Jekyll) generates
       | RSS as well. It isn't that simple, there are lots of validations
       | that can break readers; this has taken quite a few bug fixes to
       | get right:
       | 
       | https://extrastatic.dev/svekyll/svekyll-cli/-/merge_requests...
       | 
       | FWIW: I wrote a post using Svekyll about AI embeddings which has
       | a view source button at the bottom. If you click that, you can
       | download a full svekyll blog and add the RSS code to the
       | _config.yml and then just "npm i && npm run build" to see it
       | generate the RSS for that complex post. Then, look at it in your
       | feed reader to see how it escapes the HTML, code blocks, images,
       | etc.
       | 
       | https://webiphany.com/2024-04-29-distance-sean-shawn
        
         | Rush2112 wrote:
         | I can answer that first question: For my personal website I
         | wanted to add some updates for different things. But making an
         | entire webpage seemed a bit much and inconvenient for those
         | that wanted keep up to date. So this solution is just less
         | effort (if you subtract the time taken to create an application
         | for it ;))
        
         | swyx wrote:
         | oh nice! do you support podcasts? (mp3 enclosures on RSS)
        
           | xrd wrote:
           | No, but let's chat about it! I'll email you.
        
       | oliverkwebb wrote:
       | > As a result, you don't have to write articles on your website
       | first and have them be read by an RSS reader.
       | 
       | I don't see how this is a problem, for proper preview, the
       | markdown will have to get compiled into HTML/text anyway.
       | 
       | Most SSG's do this, but this can also be done with a good enough
       | markdown compiler ( _cough_ lowdown) and a for loop. Without
       | restricting your markdown formatting to a subset of the features
       | of 2 markdown compilers
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-20 23:01 UTC)