Podcast Shownotes As OPML
Regarding my previous post Podcast Shownotes as RSS, Dave Winer responds: "That's cool, but I think OPML works a bit betta."
I do believe he has a point.
When I was first thinking about this, my mind was in the RSS space, but I had a niggling feeling OPML might be the better choice. Then, after Dave's post I realised that the reason to use OPML (other than there are editors about) is that it's hierarchical. Hierarchical shownotes would definitely be useful:
- Introduction
- Act One
- Something happens...
- Something else happens...
- Act Two
Support for this would be very similar to my previous post. Using the namespace prefix sjl we just need to define one tag for the main feed that specifies the location of the opml file, and for the opml file itself we define several attributes for the outline type "shownotes". Does this need something like a namespace prefix? I need to ask Dave or some other OPML expert about how outline element types are made unique... It's handy that Gnomedex is coming up...
We then get:
[an item in podcast.xml]
<item>
<title>A Brit Abroad - June 14, 2005</title>
<description>
Normal shownotes go here...
</description>
<enclosure
url="http://www.steve-lacey.com/Some.mp3"
length="15094642"
type="audio/mpeg"/>
<sjl:shownotes>
http://www.steve-lacey.com/Notes/Some.opml
</sjl:shownotes>
</item>
[Notes/Some.opml]
<opml version="1.0"
xmlns:sjl="http://www.steve-lacey.com/sjl/">
<head>
<title>A Brit Abroad Shownotes</title>
</head>
<body>
<outline text="A Brit Abroad" type="shownote"
sjl:shownoteFor="http://www.steve-lacey.com/Some.mp3"
sjl:shownoteLink="http://www.steve-lacey.com/Item.html"
sjl:shownoteFeed="http://www.steve-lacey.com/Feed.xml">
<outline text="Name and date check."
type="shownote" sjl:begin="0" sjl:end="3"/>
<outline text="Intro music and sweeper."
type="shownote" sjl:begin="4" sjl:end="15"/>
<outline text="Act One" type="shownote">
<outline text="Something happens..."
type="shownote" sjl:begin="16" sjl:end="320"/>
<outline text="Something else happens..."
type="shownote" sjl:begin="321" sjl:end="462"/>
</outline>
</outline>
</body>
</opml>
I'm sure someone is going to scream, you can't extend OPML like that.
So there we have it. I could go either way - RSS or OPML, but OPML does give you the potential for hierarchical shownotes. Thanks to Dave for the nudge.
Thoughts?
Update: Thinking about this some more, due to the hierarchical nature and the suggested structure above, a single OPML file could contain the shownotes for multiple podcasts. Going out on a limb here, the client could actually subscribe to the OPML file itself instead...
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Hi, l am with you on this I think OPML is a good way. what we need is some way of automating the show notes I find that very time consuming