My OPML wishlist
OPML is handy for a lot of uses, basically it packages data for exchange or browsing at a GUI.
This type of data, can be recorded data, like Attention data, or a feed list, or a link list, or a text book outline, or an OPML Directory, or a combination,
etc…
Let me know if you know of any other OPML uses, here are some things I’d like to see using OPML, most of these are in their basic stages of development.
Search in an OPML
Just say I had an OPML URL for one of my del.icio.us tags, and I wanted to full-text search all the bookmarks within this tag…the idea is to enter this OPML into a search service and then enter a search term, and you are off.
Now just imagine I made my own OPML (at a place like OPML Workstation), maybe this OPML could contain lots of folders composed of links, feeds, texts, and wait, other OPML’s. That’s right, an item in my OPML can be another OPML (called an include), I could add heaps of these to my OPML.
Just say each of these OPML includes had includes of their own, and so on…this would be a huge OPML Directory.
Now if I enter this OPML URL I would be searching full-text across a massive directory, or I could take one of the OPML includes from my OPML and choose to just search within that…more.
This could lead to communal topic engines.
Subscribe to an OPML or get services to subscribe to your OPML
Be able to plugin my OPML anywhere, so when I update my OPML all these services I have it plugged into are updated.
It seems every service I join I can only add feeds, or an OPML file…even if I can add an OPML URL, it is just for the purpose of batch loading.
BlogBridge is the pioneer, why not when you join a service (like the myriad of RSS Readers I try out), get it to subscribe to your OPML itself, instead of just batch loading the feeds via OPML.
Now that OPML’s are not just files, they can be an OPML URL, why not take advantage of the potential dynamics.
I just noticed that Share Your OPML (SYO) also subscribes to you OPML, when I made changes to my OPML, thay were reflected to the OPML I shared at SYO.
I’m trying to get Ziki to do this, and other services I share my OPML with.
OPML archive or latest posts for your blog
Wrap all my blogs posts in OPML…basically a blog archive.
- OPML for latest posts (this post points to a bookmarklet that will identify the blog post title links on your blog homepage and wrap them in OPML.)
- The above bookmarklet scrapes the blog homepage for blog post title links, you could also do this for a blog post category or month page
BUT, since it just scrapes the title links on a given page (home page, category or month) this makes it limited to the latest posts only.
So, if one of my blog categories spans over 5 pages, the bookmarklet won’t work as it is only useful for one page.
Why do I want to do this?
Well I could pop an OPML for each month of posts or category in Grazr in the sidebar of my blog, this way you could browse and read my whole blog in Grazr.
Or maybe you want to grab a month of posts and import the OPML into del.icio.us…maybe one day 
ie. grab a bunch of links and put them somewhere else.
Anyway, OPML Utils could be the answer, if only it would take off.
NOTE: check out The RSS blog, or the Rmail blog, you will notice that each month has an RSS feed, and all of these month feeds are wrapped in OPML.
The difference is that each month doesn’t just have the last few posts of the month, it has all the posts, so it is an archive.
This means you can graze an archive of this blog by month in Grazr, see what I mean:
Randy could put a Grazr on his sidebar, this way you could browse his blog in a small window, or as you see it is a widget on my blog, that’s amazing, you are browsing someone else’s entire blog on my blog.
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Hi John-
You say:”Just say I had an OPML URL for one of my del.icio.us tags, and I wanted to full-text search all the bookmarks within this tag…the idea is to enter this OPML into a search service and then enter a search term, and you are off.”
What do you mean - OPML URL for ONE of muy delicious tags? For ONE tag, you get an RSS feed of the links marked up with that tag. And http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/searchfeedrlabs.php will let you search the text of those bookmarked pages (well,up to 15 of them).
Re the communal topic engine - try mailing marc at mojeek - http://mojeek.com/mps
tony
Comment by Tony Hirst — October 16, 2006 @ 9:16 am
A librarians opml-wishlist
John Tropea has some wishes on the opml-front:
A search tool for searching a specific opm-file: I like the idea, but there is a risk when such a tool also searches in the opml-files that it finds within the opml (inclusion). Searching full-text across…
Trackback by Justplain — October 16, 2006 @ 10:07 am
You wondered about other uses for OPML. I’ve been using it to document processes. The ability to drag nodes makes it easy for the writer, and the ability to focus on a single node makes it easy for the reader. When you include a bunch of process documentation into an umbrella outline you got yourself a whole procedures manual.
Agree about subbing to a URL. I’ve been crusading about that one too.
Comment by Amyloo — October 16, 2006 @ 9:43 pm