Glossary

Atom

Atom is an XML feed format. It is slightly different technically than an RSS feed and is capable of more richly describing its content. Atom is not as widely used as RSS however and many of the extra features are not commonly used. From an end userŐs perspective there is rarely any difference between an Atom or RSS feed.

Channel

In the context of an RSS reader usually an alternative term for a news feed. See Feed.

Feed

Feed (short for 'news feed') is a generic term for any kind of RSS or Atom formatted XML file that contains a list of items that is published by a website. Most commonly the list of items describes a set of news headlines along with summaries briefly describing each one and links to the full content on the host website.

OPML

OPML stands for Outline Processor Markup Language. It is a format for storing lists of things. It has become the industry standard for sharing RSS feed lists. OPML can store flat or hierarchical lists. Like RSS and Atom it too is XML based.

Podcast

An audio or video file attached to an item in an RSS feed. Similar in concept to an email attachment. Audio podcasts are the most common kind and there are many thousands of them available from both amateur and professional sources on every imaginable topic.

RSS

RSS, which is short for Really Simple Syndication, is a very common XML feed format, originated by Netscape as a means of syndicating news headlines. There are several different versions of RSS, 2.0 being the most recent. NewsLife supports all RSS versions. When given the choice always go for the newer format as the older ones do not contain as much information about each news item and may be more prone to being malformed which can cause problems parsing them.

Subscription

In the context of an RSS reader usually an alternative term for feed. See Feed.

XML

XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. It's a text based format for storing data delimited by tags. It is very similar in appearance to HTML but has far stricter rules governing its formatting. RSS, Atom and OPML are examples of XML based formats.

Return to Help Index