Re: [viewvc-dev] Re: RSS Feeds built from queries

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 9:43 AM, C. Michael Pilato <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Larry Shatzer, Jr. wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 9:57 AM, Larry Shatzer, Jr. <[email protected]<mailto:
>> [email protected]>> wrote:
>>
> [...]
>
>> Playing around with this again, and came up with the following patch (I'm
>> not 100% happy with this one, but it is much simpler), plus it does not muck
>> around with the template. The only part I am not happy with is not being
>> able to easily reconstruct the URL and just tack on the format of rss. Is
>> there a simpler way? This also forces all query result pages to have the
>> query filtered RSS feed, while the other approach listed both feeds, and let
>> the user select.
>>
>
> I'm torn.  There's some value to having "the RSS href" mean the same thing
> consistently across the various views, so this new approach is in that
> respect a regression.  But then again, if I'm looking a page of query
> results and I see an RSS icon, I'm naturally going to think that the feed
> href is related to the query I just performed (in which case your latest
> approach is The Right Thing).
>

I'm torn as well, and don't have a real preference to either. If I were
forced to make a decision I would probably lean towards having the two
links, just from a UI perspective, since that gives the end user the most
choice in which feed to subscribe to. Of course it might end up confusing
them as well. The whole reason I started to look at this was since I assumed
that the feed url from the search result page was filtered just like the
search.


>
> What do others think?  Is it fine to declare that rss_href is:
>
>  - in the query results view, based on the query itself
>  - in other views, based on recent commits to the directory/file
>
> ?
>
> Or should the definition be always about recent commits, and just add a
> second RSS feed link to the query results page?  And if that's the way we
> want to go, what do we do about UI presentation?  The current feed stuffs
> are populated from common included EZT template chunks, which means either
> all templates have to carry the mostly-unused new feed href, or the query
> view may only present its custom RSS feed href in the "main body" of the
> HTML output.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
To counter my weak preference for having two feeds listed on the search
result, It might be worth bringing up the issue to add ATOM feed
capabilities to ViewVC (293). If we had a feed for the normal feed, PLUS the
feed filtered by the query, soon as we add ATOM feeds, it needs to mirror
this functionality. So then we would have 4 feeds shown/exposed from the
search result page, which might add to confusion. So in this case I am
leaning towards the last patch provided.

If we do end up with the RSS feed on all pages except the query result page,
we need to at least change the description text of the feed(s) on the search
results to make sure it is clear those RSS feeds are filtered.

-- Larry