Atom Feed Content

I've found something in Publii to nag about, although it's not really the fault of Publii per se. It's more to do with loose specs and lack of standardisation elsewhere, and the issues this can then cause.

In my previous post, I used the primsJS plugin to include some HTML and CSS code. The plugin is marked as outdated, I haven't looked at how to update or if there even is an update available yet. That's fine though, it works as intended nonetheless (or as far as my particular user case intends). It highlights syntax, it looks pretty. The plugin is not the problem here.

Publii uses Atom feed specification as opposed to RSS. Why? I don't know, it doesn't really matter. RSS and Atom are just two arcane leaves on the same tree that everybody uses without even knowing the technologies exist. They have both been around long enough that any feed reader should be able to parse the data from any given feed .. should.

My favourite feed reader, Nextcloud News, apparently doesn't like Atom HTML content. It may be that Publii has used HTML as the type attribute for the content element. That's the only thing I can think of that could be causing it. Atom's spec says HTML should be escaped, which would the render the escaped HTML in the prism code blocks moot. Maybe this should have been rendered as XHTML? But, then again: this problem doesn't seem to occur in other feed readers I've looked at.

I could test my theory, and figure out some kind of a solution. Maybe I could set up a CI/CD solution to tweak the feed after it's made - there is no real way to change the RSS feed at this level within the Publii software. But then again, I think I just won't. The point of blogging in Publii was that it was supposed to be quick and easy. I have enough distractions and rabbit holes already, I don't need another.

"Works in most feed readers" is not bad to be fair. With so many revisions to specifications and differing standards for syndication feeds, I think it's surprising how good the compatibility in general already is, even if it's not perfect in some places. And including full content of an article is technically a complimentary extra to RSS feeds as it is. As for Publii's choice in syndication formats, I will respect it. I will likely just put a warning to let readers know this feed might not work in some readers whenever I include code blocks that resemble XML.

I will say though: I feel a certain validation in the choices I made with the RSS feed in my main website. In the corners of the syndication software world I have explored as yet, my feed seems to have a pretty high compatibility rate.