How to deal with thumbnail enclosures

[ORelio]

As discussed in #340 and #802 (here), some articles may have a thumbnail and some feed readers can understand and display article thumbnails. As such, RSS-Bridge allows bridges to attach images to an item using the enclosures field. However, there are 2 things that may pose an issue:

• Enclosure URLs not ending with a file extensions (so no MIME type can be guessed)

  • There is currently no proper way in RSS-Bridge to state that an enclosure is an image

• Articles with no images could get an optional, static enclosure (e.g. site logo or profile pic)

  • This would be particularly useful for Facebook and Twitter

What are your thought about how these could be implemented in RSS-Bridge? 🙂

[teromene]

Repeat of my comment in #802 :
For thumbnails, there is support in MRSS : http://www.rssboard.org/media-rss#media-thumbnails
What we can do, is create a new variable for thumbnails, that we would merge with the enclosures for standard ATOM

[ORelio]

As discussed here, the name is misleading in the specifications because that thumbnail is for the attachment, not the main content. So if you have an enclosure, you can set a thumbnail for it.

[teromene]

I am not sure about this, as the specifications are clearly saying that

The following elements are optional and may appear as sub-elements of <channel>, <item>, <media:content> and/or <media:group>. (http://www.rssboard.org/media-rss#optional-elements)

However, the part about the thumbnail is saying that

Allows particular images to be used as representative images for the media object

So it's not that clear whether it is allowed or not.
I wonder how do feed readers react to having a feed with such an item ?

[ORelio]

Hmm... We had attachments as media:thumbnail previously in RSS-Bridge, at that time I was able to check that Firefox was processing it properly, and Feedly was not. I guess that feed reader authors themselves were not sure about this part of the specs 😅

[logmanoriginal]

I guess that feed reader authors themselves were not sure about this part of the specs

I have no doubt about that. The RSS specification(s) are a huge mess, with versions being released in random orders all over the place. Wikipedia actually has a nice summary of that.

I am not sure about this, as the specifications are clearly saying that [...]

The specification you are referring to is actually a module, an extension to the original RSS 2.0 specification. Feed readers must support the original specification. Modules, however, are optional. This is why we see so many differences between feed readers.

For thumbnails, there is support in MRSS [...]

The module you are referring to is not supported by all feed readers. We should, however, properly implement that module for feed readers that do support it.

We had attachments as media:thumbnail previously in RSS-Bridge [...]

Unfortunately they weren't implemented correctly (more below). Then again, the format is called "MRSS" and not "RSS", so we should include the MRSS module...

Anyway, what you are searching for is actually part of the Media RSS Specification @teromene is referring to. media:thumbnails, however, is only a portion of it:

<media:thumbnail>

Allows particular images to be used as representative images for the media object. If multiple thumbnails are included, and time coding is not at play, it is assumed that the images are in order of importance.

-- http://www.rssboard.org/media-rss#media-thumbnails

So the thumbnail is used to represent a media object. Unfortunately they didn't specify exactly what a media object is. Fortunately we can assume that the media object must be an image, audio, video, animation, etc...

Each object should be enclosed in a single media:content element:

<media:content> is a sub-element of either <item> or <media:group>.

-- http://www.rssboard.org/media-rss#media-content

and

While both <media:content> and <media:group> have no limitations on the number of times they can appear [...]

-- http://www.rssboard.org/media-rss#media-content

Actually, the media:content element is probably enough already. But we can add media:thumbnail to be sure. What do you think?

[logmanoriginal]

Also, pointer to #572 for implementing different types of RSS / MRSS formats (not sure if this is a good idea anymore)

[ORelio]

After thinking for a bit, I'm not sure what is the added value for the MRSS format. Old feed readers will be more at ease with standard RSS 2.0, and recent readers will handle ATOM properly. There is probably a use case for MRSS but I don't see it, nor I know feed readers properly handling thumbnails in the form of media:thumbnail, but I have not tried many feed readers. Maybe someone else know more about it.

[logmanoriginal]

Old (and new) feed readers will just ignore extensions they don't support, so adding the MRSS module isn't an issue. We just have to make sure the feed is RSS 2.0 compliant first, MRSS second.

You can find a nice overview of feed reader protocol support on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_feed_aggregators#Web_feed_and_protocol_support

In my opinion RSS-Bridge doesn't gain much from supporting MRSS. Feed readers (and users) should focus on Atom, rather than RSS.

There is probably a use case for MRSS but I don't see it

It was invented by Yahoo! for their media search engine (http://video.search.yahoo.com/). The idea was for content creators to provide MRSS feeds. That way, media creators could add more contents to search results (and make it more relevant to the user).

I've been trying to find some information on Yahoo!, but couldn't find it. Bing, however, has implemented its own specification based on MRSS for the same purpose (of course it's not compatible):
https://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/media-rss-mrss-video-feed-specification-350cfabf

[ontheair81]

I am using TinyTinyRSS for some years now. Today I found RSS-Bridge, installed it on my server and used it to generate feeds from Twitter for TinyTinyRSS.

As you mentioned: Thumbnails in Tweets are not recognized and not shown by TinyTinyRSS, when the feed is generated by RSS-Bridge.

I understand that there is confusion about the RSS specifications and different ideas to handle that - as discussed above.
But to simplify my question: Is there anything I can do (as a regular user without coding skills) to make TinyTinyRSS show the thumbnails?

(Sorry if I got this thread wrong; I am completely new to RSS-Bridge.)

[logmanoriginal]

Thumbnails in Tweets are not recognized and not shown by TinyTinyRSS, when the feed is generated by RSS-Bridge.

I suppose something is wrong with your installation of tt-rss (or your browser - see below), because it works fine on my end. Here is an example for enclosures in one of my feeds (notice the "Attachments" button):

One thing that made my installation fail in the past was an add-on to block cross-site tracking. Adding tt-rss to the whitelist solved it for me.

Is there anything I can do (as a regular user without coding skills) to make TinyTinyRSS show the thumbnails?

Asking for help and reporting issues is the best way to help discover problems and improve the project.

[logmanoriginal]

Closing because feed formats were completely updated to adhere to the standards. If this is still an issue please consider opening a new issue.