This post makes me think.

Something came up on the syndication syntax list that bothers me. Syndication (RSS for now, Atom next) depends on separating formatting from content. A lump of html is thrown into an xml wrapper and passed along.

What happens to the original style sheets and the styled treatment of the post?

[a klog apart]

I want my news reader to give me the basics of the content, mainly the text. If I want the rich experience of the site in it's graphical glory, I'd go to the page. A problem is that I'm a geek and my needs are different than most of America and the world. :>

I think what we need to be careful about here is confining RSS/Nechoatom to one type of experience vs. another. RSS is a content syndication format, not an alternative to the visual experience the WWW has become. Let RSS transport syndicated content. Let RSS aggregators read it and display the feed. Instead of combining the web browser with the aggregator and perpetuating the current conventional thinking, let's try to take this in a different direction

Create a different kind of aggregator, one that's a browser first and a RSS reader second. The browser has a preference page where you subscribe to feeds of interest. Second, add a list of keywords to find in the feeds. Third, add technology to monitor your site view habits (think Tivo without the privacy issues).

When you launch this program, it displays a “customized home page” using the prefs from the paragraph above. Click a button on the page and the app opens news/info/entertainment of interest where each category is a window, each web page a tab. Info you wanted to know is highlighted (cues from CSS embedded in the feed or web page). Keywords are highlighted differently.

Wow…where did this post come from. Too much caffeine too early….

Anyway, all of the technology exists for this today. Apple's WebKit and Microsoft's integration of IE allow an app to be written that displays valid HTML correctly, but not be limited to a web browser app.

Whew. Comments? Brent Simmons, are you out there? You are the person that could do this. If Watson and NNW slept together, this idea would be their child.

Update: John Robb is thinking along the same lines with this. By the way, John, fix Radio so your post links in your RSS feed are the permalinks back to your web site. This one was to Macromedia.