Org publish syndication

Org publish syndication

[Matthew Lundin]

I have been trying to get a better handle on emacs lisp and thought I
might cut my teeth on an add-on for org-publish that would syndicate
xml and/or rss feeds for org-publish projects and/or individual
files/directories.

Because of its rich markup, org-mode has the potential to be a
wonderful platform for creating syndicated content. I'm intrigued by
the ideas behind blorg.el, but am not sure if that project is dead.
(Any updates would be greatly appreciated!)

For now, I simply want to code something that will create
chronological feeds of headings (+ optional content) with the most
recent inactive timestamps, either for the entire project or for
individual pages. (I think this would be a nice way for people to get
quick updates on current projects. E.g., if I flip an item to DONE, it
would pop to the top of the feed.) One could optionally create fields
of upcoming deadlines and scheduled items based on active, rather than
inactive, timestamps.

My own interest in this is to create announcement feeds for classes I
teach. E.g., my students could subscribe to feeds that update them
with news and relevant new content. Another idea: an option of
generating blog-style html pages that aggregate timestamped content
from several pages.

My current plan is to control options through a
org-publish-syndicate-alist that would offer the possibility of
generating different feeds based on specified tags, TODO keywords,
pages, directories, and/or category. (Not sure if I'll have use of
these, but it would be nice, for instance, to be able to create a feed
based on items in the subdirectory "western-civ" with the todo-keyword
FEED, which would be setup to generate a timestamp.)

I think this would also have the potential to aggregate tag content
for an entire site: i.e., a possible option of creating individual
feeds and index pages for all tagged content in a project, with x
number of items per page/feed. 

Any thoughts/feedback? 

- Matt

P.S. Let me warn you in advance that I'm doing this as a way of
educating myself about emacs lisp, so please don't expect any quick
progress.

----
Matt Lundin
http://faculty.valpo.edu/mlundin/

Re: Org publish syndication [dynamic web with org]

[Eric Schulte]

Hi Matt,

This is a very interesting project.  I am looking forward to seeing what
you come up with.  The hardest part to me seems to be triggering a
publish action when one of your subtrees needs to be added to the feed.

This is one of a couple of different ideas which have surfaced in the
mailing list recently which all could be described as the creation of
dynamic web-pages from org-mode formatted files.  Some of the other
ideas that come to mind are blogs (as you mentioned [BTW: I don't think
blorg.el is under active development]), the creation of a wiki in which
the markup syntax is org-mode, the use of org-mode for project-wide TODO
tracking and collaboration (presumably through a web interface to the
org-file usable by the Emacs illiterate), and the use of org-mode files
to track bug reports in an online bug tracker.

I would propose we address the general question of

  *dynamic web content with org*

all at once, maybe through a solicitation/collection of ideas,
requirements, and use-cases, and then through some process of
investigating which implementation options we might have to turn to.
Some questions that come to mind are...

1) Would we want Emacs to run a web-server so we can keep everything in
   elisp?
2) Would we want to use some outside language/platform to handle the
   actual web-programming?
3) How would we integrate org-mode with another language (externally
   visible org-mode API exposed by a running Emacs)??

Thanks -- Eric


aside:

I've been trying to familiarize myself with some of the common-lisp
web-frameworks in my spare time, and I'm hoping to implement a simple
org-mode formatted wiki, which uses git (instead of a database) to
handle versioning

Matthew Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> writes:

> I have been trying to get a better handle on emacs lisp and thought I
> might cut my teeth on an add-on for org-publish that would syndicate
> xml and/or rss feeds for org-publish projects and/or individual
> files/directories.
>
> Because of its rich markup, org-mode has the potential to be a
> wonderful platform for creating syndicated content. I'm intrigued by
> the ideas behind blorg.el, but am not sure if that project is dead.
> (Any updates would be greatly appreciated!)
>
> For now, I simply want to code something that will create
> chronological feeds of headings (+ optional content) with the most
> recent inactive timestamps, either for the entire project or for
> individual pages. (I think this would be a nice way for people to get
> quick updates on current projects. E.g., if I flip an item to DONE, it
> would pop to the top of the feed.) One could optionally create fields
> of upcoming deadlines and scheduled items based on active, rather than
> inactive, timestamps.
>
> My own interest in this is to create announcement feeds for classes I
> teach. E.g., my students could subscribe to feeds that update them
> with news and relevant new content. Another idea: an option of
> generating blog-style html pages that aggregate timestamped content
> from several pages.
>
> My current plan is to control options through a
> org-publish-syndicate-alist that would offer the possibility of
> generating different feeds based on specified tags, TODO keywords,
> pages, directories, and/or category. (Not sure if I'll have use of
> these, but it would be nice, for instance, to be able to create a feed
> based on items in the subdirectory "western-civ" with the todo-keyword
> FEED, which would be setup to generate a timestamp.)
>
> I think this would also have the potential to aggregate tag content
> for an entire site: i.e., a possible option of creating individual
> feeds and index pages for all tagged content in a project, with x
> number of items per page/feed. 
>
> Any thoughts/feedback? 
>
> - Matt
>
> P.S. Let me warn you in advance that I'm doing this as a way of
> educating myself about emacs lisp, so please don't expect any quick
> progress.
>
> ----
> Matt Lundin
> http://faculty.valpo.edu/mlundin/
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode

Re: Org publish syndication [dynamic web with org]

[mdl]

Eric,

Thanks so much for the reply. You raise many of the questions that I
myself have been wondering about recently.

"Eric Schulte" <schulte.eric@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Matt,
>
> This is a very interesting project.  I am looking forward to seeing what
> you come up with.  The hardest part to me seems to be triggering a
> publish action when one of your subtrees needs to be added to the feed.

I given my initial brainstorming further thought, and I think I'll
start simply---i.e., ability to generate a feed from 1st level DONE
headlines on a single page. More than that seems unnecessarily complex
at the moment, given the general interest in dynamic websites that use
org-mode files for their data.
>
> the creation of a wiki in which the markup syntax is org-mode, 

This would be incredible. Ikiwiki (written in Perl) comes to mind as
flat-file wiki that stores revisions in git or subversion.

http://ikiwiki.info/

> 1) Would we want Emacs to run a web-server so we can keep everything in
>    elisp?
> 2) Would we want to use some outside language/platform to handle the
>    actual web-programming?
> 3) How would we integrate org-mode with another language (externally
>    visible org-mode API exposed by a running Emacs)??
>
> Thanks -- Eric

I look forward to hearing what others have to say about these
questions.

Best,
Matt