RSS feeds are quite useless nowadays. Firefox is not a native client anymore. I propose we add a system preference to disable RSS feed (off by default).
I like the idea of a pref, maybe a multi type one that allows to check the specific ones you want to deactivate? Torn about the off by default - We still get support questions about this (and it not working nicely in all cases). I think it's still nice to see that Koha can do this.
What's the harm in having an RSS feed? What's the point of disabling it?
(In reply to Owen Leonard from comment #2) > What's the harm in having an RSS feed? What's the point of disabling it? The reason is not for a good reason : it is very often broken by translation. Beeing half XML half HTML makes translation difficult.
(In reply to Fridolin SOMERS from comment #3) > (In reply to Owen Leonard from comment #2) > > What's the harm in having an RSS feed? What's the point of disabling it? > > The reason is not for a good reason : it is very often broken by translation. > Beeing half XML half HTML makes translation difficult. I think Julian might have an idea on how to fix it - I think improving translation of the RSS feeds would be key hten.
(In reply to Fridolin SOMERS from comment #0) > RSS feeds are quite useless nowadays. I disagree about RSS feeds being useless. I have a media project which ingests emails, webpages, and RSS feeds, and the RSS feeds are the most machine friendly data format. I'm always super happy when I find a RSS feed to ingest instead of some other non-standard format. That said, many of my Koha libraries don't want to publish them, so I agree about having a system preference to disable the RSS feed. I'd use it for sure. (In reply to Fridolin SOMERS from comment #3) > The reason is not for a good reason : it is very often broken by translation. > Beeing half XML half HTML makes translation difficult. (In reply to Katrin Fischer from comment #4) > I think Julian might have an idea on how to fix it - I think improving > translation of the RSS feeds would be key hten. Yeah, this sounds like an implementation issue rather than a RSS feed issue. I've consumed RSS feeds in mixed English and Chinese and had no problems, so it sounds like we're just not implementing the RSS feed correctly in Koha.
Beeing half XML half HTML makes translation difficult. > > (In reply to Katrin Fischer from comment #4) > > I think Julian might have an idea on how to fix it - I think improving > > translation of the RSS feeds would be key hten. > > Yeah, this sounds like an implementation issue rather than a RSS feed issue. > I've consumed RSS feeds in mixed English and Chinese and had no problems, so > it sounds like we're just not implementing the RSS feed correctly in Koha. The issue is not encoding or similar, but that translators create errors as they see not only the strings, but part of the code in translation. When they don't know, what it is and translate stuff they shouldn't you can end up with invalid XML = broken RSS.
(In reply to Katrin Fischer from comment #6) > Beeing half XML half HTML makes translation difficult. (In reply to Katrin Fischer from comment #6) > The issue is not encoding or similar, but that translators create errors as > they see not only the strings, but part of the code in translation. When > they don't know, what it is and translate stuff they shouldn't you can end > up with invalid XML = broken RSS. Still sounds like an issue with the implementation rather than RSS itself. As you said in a different comment, improving the translation of the RSS feeds seems like a reasonable thing to do. That said, I think this bug report is still valid in itself. Not because RSS is problematic, but rather just because some people don't want RSS feeds published from their Koha.
We have just had an overload attack where the intruders used RSS-feeds, so I think this bug comes in a new light.
(In reply to Klas Blomberg from comment #8) > We have just had an overload attack where the intruders used RSS-feeds, so I > think this bug comes in a new light. They could just use your regular search too. Too protect against this, you'll need to harden your server in other ways. That said, it's an interesting point about not just hiding RSS fields, but actually disabling them.
RSS is very useful. I don't have to open the OPAC and click on “Newest books” to know what's new in the library - my RSS feed reader does it for me.