[wp-hackers] XSL for feeds

[Owen Winkler]

David House wrote:
> On 08/04/06, Podz <podz at tamba2.org.uk> wrote:
>> Right now, support.
>> We are asking theme authors to learn new code. I have no doubt some will
>> but I would guess most will not. Which leaves support to fall elsewhere.
>> That generates problems.....
> 
> Actually, I just had a better idea. XSLT can basically spit out
> anything you want, so in our case we'd get it to spit out HTML. It
> doesn't specify colours and fonts etc., that's what CSS is for. So we
> have three layers:

Do not give theme authors the ability to customize yet another 
presentation method for their blog.  There is a very simple solution for 
this.  The solution is two-fold:

1) Insert a hook to drop XSL into the feed so that overzealous feed 
customizers can style things themselves if they really must.

2) Set that hook to display a default XSL stylesheet that *creates a 
two-frame frameset* (or better, an iframe with a header).  The top 
frame/header has a notice that says "You are viewing a feed URL.  Add 
<a>the feed</a> to your <a>aggregator</a> to read this site from there." 
  The bottom frame contains the *blog home page itself*.

That way, you get the notice that you should be using that URL with an 
aggregator along with a link to what an aggregator is and where to get 
one.  You also don't have to worry about your blog appearing in a new 
format, because you're already using the format that your theme provides.

Owen