Re^5: HTML from single, double and triple encoded entities in RSS documents

So what you're saying is, RSS is broken and until the entire world adopts the ATOM format or something similar, there is simply no point in trying to make any sense of any of the existing RSS feeds?

Strikes me that is the same argument that said "Only perl can parse Perl", and so nobody tried. Until one day along comes someone who'd either never heard that, or simply decided to go ahead and try anyway, with the result we have PPI.

I realise that there are still some things that PPI won't handle, so the original missive is correct, but from what I've seen, the occassions when it would fail are the same occasions when if the code was posted here, everyone would be throwing their arms up saying: For the sake of your own sanity and that of maintenance programmers everywhere, "Don't do that!".

For the vast majority of code created for anything other than deliberate obfu purposes, PPI seems to be able to a pretty fine job.

Given the way the things work--there are still sites out there generating pre-HTML 2.0 markup; adoption of new standards always takes a long time--, don't you think that there is some scope for doing the best you can with what is available now?

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

Comment on Re^5: HTML from single, double and triple encoded entities in RSS documents

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^6: HTML from single, double and triple encoded entities in RSS documents by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 08, 2006 at 01:12 UTC
The best you can do is decode exactly twice and write off feeds where that’s not good enough as collateral damage. That will cover 98% or so for the feeds in the wild; the remaining 2% are simply unreclaimable, and whatever clever approach you employ as you try will just break a different (and larger) set of feeds. The analogy to PPI is not very useful. Perl code has a precise meaning that can be read out unambiguously, even if it’s extremely hard to achieve that. In contrast, RSS titles do not have precise meaning to begin with. As for Atom, I have no illusions about what it means for writing software that consumes feeds: nothing, because you clearly can’t ignore the millions of deployed RSS feeds. Nor was I saying you should at any point of this diatriabe. I’m just imploring those who are only just writing feed generation code now to please make the sane choice right off the bat, so that this headache, even though it is here to stay, will at least not grow (too much). (Please note that it’s Atom, not ATOM: it’s neither an acronym nor a backronym and doesn’t stand for anything; it’s a proper name.) Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.

Re^6: HTML from single, double and triple encoded entities in RSS documents
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 08, 2006 at 01:12 UTC

The best you can do is decode exactly twice and write off feeds where that’s not good enough as collateral damage. That will cover 98% or so for the feeds in the wild; the remaining 2% are simply unreclaimable, and whatever clever approach you employ as you try will just break a different (and larger) set of feeds.

The analogy to PPI is not very useful. Perl code has a precise meaning that can be read out unambiguously, even if it’s extremely hard to achieve that. In contrast, RSS titles do not have precise meaning to begin with.

As for Atom, I have no illusions about what it means for writing software that consumes feeds: nothing, because you clearly can’t ignore the millions of deployed RSS feeds. Nor was I saying you should at any point of this diatriabe. I’m just imploring those who are only just writing feed generation code now to please make the sane choice right off the bat, so that this headache, even though it is here to stay, will at least not grow (too much).

(Please note that it’s Atom, not ATOM: it’s neither an acronym nor a backronym and doesn’t stand for anything; it’s a proper name.)

Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]