information

This page is a form you can use to tweak everything tweakable about the way CIA generates RSS feeds. After finding the settings you want, the submission button at the bottom will redirect you to the customized RSS feed.

RSS Format

There are two current RSS format specifications. Both are named RSS, but they are actually very different formats with different goals. RSS 2.0 is not 'newer' or 'better' than RSS 1.0 just because 2 is greater than 1; they are just two separate specifications. CIA gives you the choice of either.

RSS 2.0

The default format. RSS 2.0 is simple, and has a publish/subscribe system that can make it possible to receive updates immediately without polling. Unfortunately, very few news aggregators currently implement the <cloud> tag necessary for publish/subscribe.

The CIA server implements the <cloud> tag, so if you have a compatible aggregator and a globally routable IP address you should see RSS feed updates almost instantly. However, the only compatible aggregator we're aware of at the moment is Radio Userland, and it is a commercial product. The ability to receive RSS updates in real-time would go a long way toward CIA's goals, so please let us know if you have seen other RSS aggregators supporting the <cloud> tag.

RSS 1.0

RSS 1.0 is more of an attempt to rethink RSS and design it with extensibility in mind. It makes use of XML namespaces to provide a core set of functionality along with 'modules' that can add domain-specific elements or attributes. RSS 1.0 is based on the RDF (Resource Description Framework) W3C reccomendation, giving it a rich and well-defined way to represent metadata.

CIA doesn't yet make use of an RSS 1.0 module to provide full metadata on commits. Until an RSS 1.0 module for commit messages is designed, the best way to get all possible information from CIA is to use the raw XML feeds.

There was a 'changedpage' module in the works for RSS 1.0 that would have provided features similar to the <cloud> element mentioned above for RSS 2.0, however the page for it seems to have disappeared. Please contact us with more information if you have any.

Messages

This section controls which medium CIA tries to format messages in before embedding them in the RSS feed. The default of XHTML is optimal, but alternatives are provided if you need them.

XHTML

Format messages as XHTML with embedded CSS styles. This should work and look good in most RSS aggregators.

Plain Text

Format messages in plain text, properly quoted for inclusion in RSS. This is the preferred choice if your RSS aggregator runs on a text-only console or can't handle HTML.

Unquoted Text

Format messages as plain text, but instead of quoting them twice (once on account of the RSS feed being in XML, once because the content is interpreted as HTML) this only quotes the text once. This should only be used if your RSS aggregator is buggy and does not follow the specification!

You can optionally change the maximum number of messages a feed will contain at once. Leave it blank to use the default of 20. There is no explicit upper limit, But the database does store a finite number of messages for each stats target. Please be reasonable.

Retrieve at most:

messages

Your RSS Feed

This button will now redirect you to an RSS feed with the settings above, ripe for opening in your favorite RSS aggregator or copying and pasting somewhere useful.