How to determine a URI is RSS ?

My apologies if this is the incorrect forum for my query.

I'm trying to improve the experience of adding RSS and OPML files
(e.g. lists of RSS URIs. I presume like blogrolls) to my
aggregator. Right now, a user has to know the Url of the RSS or OPML
and type it in (or cut and paste). On a pocket pc, a big issue is
that Pocket Internet Explorer does not allow you to "View Source".

Within my aggregator, you can "View Source" of an RSS feed or of the
message display and copy URLs from the HREF tags or the raw RSS Feed
XML, but the user experience is less than desirable. How do I improve
this?

It seems there are two places to add user elements within the
browser: Pop up menu, or after clicking a link.
If I pop up a menu that allows you to add a Feed to the aggregator,
how does the user know which links are for sure RSS Feeds or OPML
Files? There is absolutely no "standard" on this. I've seen "raw"
hypertext links or the orange XML image or the orange RSS image.

More recently I've seen custom links for adding the feed to specific
aggregators. Does this mean a podcaster or news publisher needs to
add a link for every aggregator?!?!

My guess is that even if I "HEAD" the Url in the link, I would get a
content type that is not specific to RSS or OPML files. I could
further parse the link to find in the first few lines, but that gets
really slow if I have to do that for each link. Plus the indication
of if the file is an RSS or OPML feed is not guaranteed to be near
the top of the file, although in most simple cases it is within the
first few lines. But this is not something I can "program around".
What would make this much easier is if there were some way to tell
an RSS Feed or OPML File from the URI or the HREF. But I don't think
that exists.

It seems like the best approach is to add a "Add to Aggregator" menu
item to every link popup and let the user decide which are valid RSS
files. The user interface implications for adding an incorrect file
type to the aggregator are horrible.

Please correct me if I'm wrong! Any help?








 
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