I’ve found the RSS feeds in the Sites/rss folder, but I still don’t understand how to use them. I’ve tried various ways to subscribe to them with my news reader, but nothing seems to work.
How are these RSS feeds put to work on a Mac?
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Could you please explain what exactly you found where? Thank you!
I found a Finder folder with a list of files having a .rss suffix (dot-rss) for each one of my DevonAgent search sets. /Users/[user]/Sites/rss
When I open any one of them in a text editor, I see search results. That’s fine, though hardly readable, except that I want my newsreader to have this content.
Does your newsreader support file URLs?
Yes.
I know the Mac OS has a local server, but I can’t seem to find a URL that the newsreader accepts. When I enter the URL (copied from BBEdit), it says no feed was found.
What exactly did you enter and what’s the full path of the feed?
I’ve searched the web for instruction and I’ve tried about 10 variations. I have only the most recent one, which is "feed://~/Sites/rss/cities.rss” That’s a combination of the “feed://“ that DTP supplies when adding a feed adjoined with what seems to be the address for a local file. Starting with “feed://…” is confusing because it’s different from feeds I’ve copied from the newsreader, such as "https://eclecticlight.co/feed/“. (An address to a feed on the Mac volume is different, of course.)
These are a few others I’ve tried (copied from various likely places):
http://localhost///Users/piazzated/Sites/rss/cities,Sicily&_Italy,_RSS_feeds.rss
~/Sites/rss/cities.rss
Perhaps you can just give an example of a properly formed feed. I assume it starts with “feed://“ since that’s how DTP seems to require. I’ve spent enough time trying to figure it out on my own.
Strange that there is no instruction for this when there’s ample instruction for almost everything else. Am I really the only one stumped by this?
I don’t even have this ~/Sites/rss directory present on any of my machines running DEVONagent. 
Does one of your search sets use the action script to convert the results to feeds?
It’s one of trhe many attempts I made based on what I found when I found no documentation here.
This is the script the DAP option invokes.
– Convert results to RSS feed
– Created by Christian Grunenberg on Sun Mar 06 2005.
– Copyright (c) 2005-2014. All rights reserved.
on results(theResults, theSet, theQuery)
tell application “DEVONagent”
try
set pathToAdditions to ((path to application id “com.devon-technologies.agent” as string) & “Contents:Resources:Script Additions.scpt”) as alias
set helperLibrary to load script pathToAdditions
set this_RSS to “<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><rss version="2.0">” & helperLibrary’s convertText2XML(theQuery) & “DEVONagent 3”
repeat with theResult in theResults
set this_RSS to this_RSS & “” & helperLibrary’s convertText2XML(|Title| of theResult) & “” & helperLibrary’s convertText2XML(|Text| of theResult) & “” & helperLibrary’s convertText2XML(|URL| of theResult) & “”
try
set this_date to |pubDate| of theResult
set this_RSS to this_RSS & “” & helperLibrary’s convertText2XML(this_date) & “”
end try
set this_RSS to this_RSS & “” & return
end repeat
set this_RSS to this_RSS & return & “”
set this_path to ((path to sites folder) as string) & “rss:”
try
do shell script "mkdir " & quoted form of POSIX path of this_path
end try
set this_file to helperLibrary’s replaceText(theSet, " ", “_”)
set this_file to helperLibrary’s replaceText(this_file, “/”, “-”)
set this_file to this_file & “.rss”
– do shell script "echo " & quoted form of this_RSS & “>” & quoted form of POSIX path of (this_path & this_file)
set writeFile to open for access (POSIX path of (this_path & this_file)) with write permission
set eof writeFile to 0
write this_RSS to writeFile as «class utf8» – Unicode text
close access writeFile
end try
end tell
end results
I’ll try Vienna and other readers. I’ve been using NetNewsWire, current version.
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What does a proper address look like? Like one of these?
/Users/cannolo/Sites/rss/cuzzillo.rss
file:///Users/cannolo/Sites/rss/smart_city_startup.rss
https://eclecticlight.co/feed/
I’ve tried each now in NewNewsWire, ReadKit, and Newsify. None like any of these addresses. I’ve just installed Vienna; I’ll try that a little later. But since the first three apps don’t like any of these addresses, I assume none are properly formed.
What does a proper address look like?
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This is a valid file URL and should work (as long the reader accepts such URLs). E.g. DEVONthink 3 does and also accepts this one:
Vienna allows adding a local file.
Well, why I can’t make it work in a newsreader will remain a mystery for now. Using it in DT3 is plenty – and I guess I never tried either of those addresses there.
Thank you.
One more note: It DOES work in Vienna! Revelation!
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Glad to hear it.