It's even worse than it appears..
Friday, November 11, 2022
Mind bombs everywhere! Wow the open web hasn't been this interesting in a very long time. #
In getting FeedLand completely dialed-in, I'm finding out about all the weird stuff developers of RSS packages have done in the name of making life "easier" for developers. Today I couldn't figure out why all of a sudden items in a new kind of feed were getting link elements when there were no item-level link elements in the feeds. Okay so I think this is what I'm dealing with. My workaround which is ugly, is to consider the link element on an item to be a ghost (ie ignore it) if it has the same value as the guid element. It's bullshit. Nothing in the design of RSS allows me to infer this. But that's what happens with egregious hacks. To live with them you have to do more egregious hacks. And that's why, my friends, code never is done. I documented the problem. #

Last update: Friday November 11, 2022; 4:03 PM EST.

You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)