OPML rendering options

Ken Smith posted this morning asking about ways to render an OPML file as a static page. The Awesome Drummer site lists six different methods to do this, I also have a OPML Includes Github repo showing how to include OPML files within an OPML file, and Dave Winer’s opmlPackage has a demo of an HTML rendering of a OPML file.

So – lots of ways to do this task. Ken’s second question was “is one of them preferable”? My answer is “it depends on your objectives”. If you have an OPML file online, and you want to quickly display it using several of the methods where you can just add the URL in a path to an online tool that will display it, and not have to think about it any more than that, then those type of things can quickly take care of your problem. If you want to have control over the manner the file is displayed, or do not want to depend on another online service/tool to take care of displaying the file, I would suggest using opmlPackage or one of the rendering scripts on the Awesome Drummer list above and hosting it yourself. The “hosting it yourself” option can be a problem for some, but is the best way to make sure your file is displayed the way you want and is available as long as you want.