RSS to download all posts?
January 2, 2009 8:53 PM Subscribe
A way to use an RSS reader to read webcomics/blog from the very first entry?
I'm wondering if this is possible, or if I'm misunderstanding the fundamentals of how RSS works. Ideally I'd like to be able to use NewNetWire to read posts from a blog or a webcomic site from the very beginning in chronological order, but it seems the app only downloads the most recent twenty or so.
I'm wondering if this is possible, or if I'm misunderstanding the fundamentals of how RSS works. Ideally I'd like to be able to use NewNetWire to read posts from a blog or a webcomic site from the very beginning in chronological order, but it seems the app only downloads the most recent twenty or so.
I've found Opera is very useful for reading webcomics from start to present. It's got some sort of "smart fast-forward" feature that automatically determines what the "next" page would be if you were to click the browser's Next arrow without your session's history declaring any next item.
That is: if you download Opera, go to the comic's archives to the first strip, and hit alt + right arrow, you'll go to the second strip, and so on. I only keep Opera around for occasions when I want to read an entire webcomic. Hope that helps, in case the RSS thing doesn't work out.
posted by ewingpatriarch at 9:56 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]
That is: if you download Opera, go to the comic's archives to the first strip, and hit alt + right arrow, you'll go to the second strip, and so on. I only keep Opera around for occasions when I want to read an entire webcomic. Hope that helps, in case the RSS thing doesn't work out.
posted by ewingpatriarch at 9:56 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]
You may just want to download the entire set, then peruse them using your favorite image viewer. Assuming they follow some sort of standard naming convention, this is pretty easy using a variety of tools, many based around wget.
On my Ubuntu box, I'd do something like this:
Given: each comic is hosted at http://www.example.com/comic123.jpg
the comic runs from image 1 to 999
There are GUI tools that do this sort of thing as well. A little google-fu should get you a long way.
posted by chrisamiller at 10:03 PM on January 2, 2009
On my Ubuntu box, I'd do something like this:
Given: each comic is hosted at http://www.example.com/comic123.jpg
the comic runs from image 1 to 999
> for i in $(seq 1 999);do wget http://www.example.com/comic$i.jpg;done
There are GUI tools that do this sort of thing as well. A little google-fu should get you a long way.
posted by chrisamiller at 10:03 PM on January 2, 2009
Firefox's vimperator add-on gives the same "next" function, bound to ']]' ("previous" is '[['). It's also generally an awesome add-on if you're a keyboard fan.
posted by d. z. wang at 3:29 AM on January 3, 2009
posted by d. z. wang at 3:29 AM on January 3, 2009
RSS feeds are configured by the host. RSS is really just an XML document, you can only pull as much as is published in that document. So, the answer is clearly "No" in your case.
posted by nmabry at 7:18 AM on January 3, 2009
posted by nmabry at 7:18 AM on January 3, 2009
I was about to ask a similar question, so I will answer with what I already know. While a feed itself only usually has the last few posts, there may be some sites that will have it cached. For example when I add a feed to google reader, it starts with the last ten but and goes from there. However the bloglines reader will keep all posts in a feed since I'm assuming the first user added it to their feed list. So while it may not have every post, you may check out bloglines to see how far back it takes your webcomic.
posted by Syntoad at 1:10 PM on January 12, 2009
posted by Syntoad at 1:10 PM on January 12, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by nicwolff at 9:08 PM on January 2, 2009