The Focus (Focuscript)

[sjehuda]

Please. Refer to this resource https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/Focus

This is currently tested with project https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/Slixfeed

Slixfeed only supports The Atom Syndication Format.

With the appropriate Focuscripts, it can read other formats such as Atom 0.3, Twtxt, Gemini Feed, JSON, RSS 1.0, RSS 0.9, et cetera.

[lemon24]

Hi, this looks like an interesting initiative!

I really like the idea of having Atom as a narrow waist, especially with XSLT at its core, since this essentially makes it language-independent, solving the O(M × N) problem (where M = formats, N = languages and/or feed readers).

Here are some questions that would help me (and possibly others) consider adoption:

1. What is the main API? Based on the documentation, I understand it is the XSLT files themselves (since it's best documented).

2. Is there any plan for a high level API (preferably Python) for the parse part alone?

   The way I see it, focus.py is meant as a sort of high-level API for retrieve+parse. However, feed readers (including reader) seem pretty opinionated about how they retrieve feeds (handling of update times, HTTP hints, etc., Feed reader behavior (story) #377), and it would be quite difficult to externalize that.

   # e.g. very high level
   def parse(url, headers, body) -> Atom
   # ...or slightly lower level (up to the user to apply the XSLT)
   def select_parser(url, headers) -> to_xml() + path to XSLT
   # where to_xml() is an optional tranformation function
   # for non-XML formats like twtxt (the stuff in utilities/)

3. Is there any plan for this to be available on PyPI?

4. Are there plans for transformation tests? FWIW, feedparser seems to have an extensive test suite that could be reused, at least partially.

5. (this is more of a curiosity) I see there's almost identical transformations for RSS from different providers (e.g. substack and hugo), is this necessary? Perhaps using includes or a similar mechanism would make the transformations easier to maintain.

Thank you! (and no pressure in answering any of the questions – I guess this would have been better as an issue on https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/Focus/, but I don't have an account)

[sjehuda]

Thanks.

Did you receive my email?

Pleaes answer, if you did not.

[lemon24]

Hi @sjehuda, I did not, please try the address on https://death.andgravity.com/about or the one in my commit messages.