I pushed out some updates to my OPML viewer app to add a toggle for expand/collapse for the outline – check out this demo, and download from Github to try it out!

New OPML viewer now available

Recently, I was doing some work to make sure that the OPML files I created using Drummer and available via Drummer were available from my site instead of drummer.scripting.com. My initial effort was using code from the outlineBrowser2 and opmlPackage repos from Dave Winer. After reviewing the code, I felt that I could focus more on using the outlineBrowser2 application. I also wanted to remove dependency on jQuery and any other hosted files (got Claude to help me with that….).

My updated viewer is now available on Github (opml-outline-viewer). The README file covers how to use the viewer to view multiple files. The rendering of the OPML file bolds each top-level headline, and uses triangle icons to expand/collapse outline elements. The default is to render the file with all headlines expanded. There is a function that allows the user to modify this behavior in code.js (collapse_everything), which is currently commented out.

Give it a try – let me know what you think!

I created a local viewer for my OPML Zettlekasten file that I created in 2022 and updated posts. The code uses a combination of the outlineBrowser2 and opmlPackage repos from Dave Winer. I will add a repo in my account soon with the setup that I used.

Working on OPML updates

Returning to our previously scheduled programming – I discovered recently that some services I used for OPML rendering are no longer running. My first change was to my post on the 2020 Electoral Count liveblog to add a new pointer (see the blog here). More news later!

For the record, I have added a link to my OPML feed list in the Links section of my navigation bar (My Blogroll/Feed List). However, I had to add a Links block in my list of widgets before I could see it – grrr!

Chris McLeod: Blogging is where it’s at, again – reviews blogging services (including Micro.blog) and OPML usage in the wild

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.

Lazyweb followup – After some testing with opmlPackage, I figured out that I needed to get the OPML of my Zettelkasten file using this URL and then selecting View Source and copying. Once I did that, I was able to process it using Pandoc.

Lazyweb request – I tried converting my OPML Zettelkasten file into Markdown using Pandoc, but got an “Invalid XML” error, because I have URLs within the outline elements. Any suggestions for fixing this? I am looking at opmlToJs to get the OPML in JSON, then use sanitize-html to escape the URLs, then write it back out using opmlToJs. Other suggestions welcome!

Feedback on my zettelkasten experiment

I have decided to slow down my updates on this project, but I do have a few observations. Adding links to the OPML file was pretty easy in Drummer. I missed adding tags to some links, but will make a sweep of the over the next week. I did some re-arranging of categories, as well as added a lot of categories after the start. In the rendered file, I noticed (as well as a reader) that all the entries are fully expanded. I may experiment with trying to flatten the categories. Also, I have not explored using XSLT style sheets to render the OPML file. Still, my biggest benefit so far is that I am now entering links into the OPML file that I would have pasted in some other file, and they are categorized, which helps in navigation.

My Hugo-based zettelkasten site is lagging in updates. I chose to create a single Markdown file for each entry, and I found that it was a significant amount of typing, even though I was starting with text from the OPML file. My favorite feature of the site is being able to view links by tag. I will continue working to get this caught up with the OPML zettelkasten.

Final note: there are lots of good tools out there, this is what I chose to start with, so far it is working for me!