The Need
I read a lot of RSS feeds on a select set of topics (see About | Bob's Content of Interest). I sometimes tweet/toot about individual posts but have the desire to expand that capability. I'd like to be able to regularly (and efficiently) publish a curated collection of articles. There are three primary functional requirements needed to accomplish this:
Collection: Deciding which articles you want to export (publish). Filtering can be done based on their title, subject matter (tags), and time constraints. My preference is to specifically mark (or tag) selected entries independent of their subject matter (see below).
Annotation: Some article titles speak for themselves, but others are best presented with associated comments that allow the reader to know what's special about the content. You need the ability to add annotations to individual articles that are included in the published result.
Publication: Once a set of articles has been identified, exporting them in an easily consumable format is the next step. One important component of exporting this content is grouping the articles based on their subject matter.
The Investigation
There are many RSS feed aggregators out there, but there was no solution that even came near to addressing the curation requirements listed above. Apparently, all of those link collection sites are just rolling their own.
As a software developer, finding such a glaring functionality gap that needs to be filled is a real win-win! 🎉 Not only is this something I want to use, but there are probably a few others who will also find a solution helpful.
Now all I had to do was design and develop that solution. I've been using Emacs and Elfeed as my RSS reader for many years. Extending Emacs functionality is a cult-like activity that attracts many. I'm not brain-washed, but even as a (non-evil) Doom user, I do spend a lot of time tweaking my Emacs configuration.
Anyway, providing this RSS curation functionality as an elfeed extension was not only the ideal technical solution, but it was also the perfect opportunity to author my first Emacs package (another win, I hope).
The Solution
Elfeed-curate is an add-on to the elfeed Emacs-based RSS feed management system that provides the ability to easily curate RSS feed entries.
Elfeed's tagging and search functionality takes care of the collection requirements and elfeed-curate adds annotation and publication (exporting) capabilities.
I have an opinionated workflow that looks like this:
See Curation Workflow for details.
A key factor (essentially, a non-functional requirement) for making this workflow practical is that each step (marking, annotation, export review, etc.) has to be fast. I think the combination of elfeed and elfeed-curate accomplishes this. I'm also sure there will be refinements and improvements in the future.
Export example
The same content exported to Hugo is here: 21-Sep-2023 Content of Interest
Feedback is always welcome. Thanks!
