[PP-main] Technical/implementation matters

[Nick Lothian]

> On Mon, Mar 06, 2000 at 11:13:26AM +0930, Nick Lothian wrote:
> >> I'd like to see this embedded in the same file as the actual content,
> >> though. It's a lot easier, and less susceptible to network
>
> > Do you want to include more than one story in a file? How does a client
get
> > a list of stories from a client?
>
> More than one story? Yes, I don't see why not, it's quite easy to do, and
> would be convenient in some cases. The list of stories can be done in
several
> ways: As a protocol thing (the way it's done in NNTP, when you get
headers)
> or as a virtual document (transferred in the same way as normal documents,
> but as a response to a certain type of request). I have no strong opinions
on
> which one is the best, really, I haven't thought about that much, but my
> intuition says "protocol", it feels more correct to me.
>

I'm not totally following you with the "virtual document" thing. I would
think the protocol
thing would make more sense.

The clients need to be able to stuff like "Give me a list of headlines
between now and a week ago" - and choose which articles they get.

I'm begining to think we need a XML-RPC interface to the server.

[big snip]

> > Of course it has to be XML - because the client sites need to be able to
> > automatically format the stories to the look of their site.
>
> Ideally, this would be done with XSL:T. But that standard isn't all that
> finished and stable, and is a bit tricky. I can think of a few
alternatives,
> like the Python based system we're going to use in Conglomerate, but none
> that make the transformation rules exactly *easy* to write.
>

Even if the XSL stuff is too difficult or doesn't work well enough yet, it
is easy enough to parse the XML document and get the story from it, and then
do what you want.