Program idea
Features
Hardeware requirements
Software requirements
Licenses
Prices
Purchase of licenses
Download
Version history
Copyright and limitation of liability
The program madicon RSS Reader, and the documentation belonging to the program, are subject to the exclusive copyright of the Author.
©2004-2010 Ingenieurbüro Manfred Dillmann. All rights reserved.
Neither the program madicon RSS Reader, nor the documentation belonging to the program, may be transferred, reproduced or translated without the previous written permission of the engineer's office Manfred Dillmann in excerpts or as a whole copied, photo-technically duplicated or be transferred to an electronic medium or into a machine readable form.
The program madicon RSS Reader was written with the largest amount of care. However, the author and publisher are not responsible for errors or omissions, nor for the use of the material treated here, and the decisions that are made consequently.
No guarantee, either directly or indirectly, is taken regarding the use of the software and contents of the documentation, the marketability or the suitability for a certain purpose. Neither the author of the documentation or the manufacturer of the software can be made liable for direct or indirect damages, which result from the use of the software or the documentation. The exclusive risk is with the user of this software.
Each user recognizes these regulations while using madicon RSS Reader and use the software without reservation.
All marks or product designations specified here are registered trade marks of the respective enterprises. All rights reserved.
madicon® is a registered mark of the Ingenieurbüro Manfred Dillmann.
Program idea
There are a lot of RSS newsfeed readers available - whether as stand alone programs or as a plug-in for one of the well-known web browsers.
A "native" solution for reading the numerously available news feeds within the Notes Client did not exist until now.
As a result of this, madicon RSS Reader was developed. It is an application for the IBM Lotus Notes/Domino platform starting from version 6.x. The program offers a comfortable use and administration of RSS feeds.
www.madicon.de offers its own news feed that you can use for your first attempts at: http://www.madicon.de/newsfeed.xml
Features
- Whole functionality within a single .NSF-file
- Unlimited RSS feeds
- Group single RSS feeds
- Import new feeds from URL or OPML file
- Define replacement code to eliminate errors in XML code
- Define replacement code for German "umlaute"
- Fetch news manually: all active feeds, by channel or by channel group
- Fetch news by scheduled background agent; interval can be chosen
- Fetch news by scheduled agent on a server; interval can be chosen
- Global interval (System preferences) or individual interval on a per-feed basis starting at 30 minutes up to 48 hours
- Multi-user enabled by individual preferences
- Uses ACL roles to control access
- Purge news automatically; news can be kept by clicking on an entry in a view. Preselection on channel basis.
- Agent activity is logged in the database
- Errors in RSS feeds are recorded in an error log
- Create folders to store news
- madicon RSS reader maintains proxy servers (or firewalls)
- Version 2 will no longer use the LotusScript DOMParser class for parsing the content of the news. In the past there were too many problems with feeds providing buggy XML code. Now I use my own routines to parse the XML code - and they are much more forgiving. With version 2, you will see parsing errors only very rare - if any.
- Manual fetching of news is now done by a Notes Client background thread, if you use the option 'Fetch News by active channels'. You can start reading new News right after the process starts (don't forget to hit the F9 key to refresh the view).
- Full support for the RSS formats: RSS 0.9, RSS 1.0, Netscape RSS 0.91, Userland's RSS 0,91, RSS 0.9x and RSS 2.0.
- Full support for the Atom 0.3 format.
- Full support for FeedBurner feeds.
- Correct translation of special characters in UTF-8 coded Feeds.
- Correct translation of nearly all special HTML characters (standard, decimal or hex notation). You probably will no longer need to maintain your own "translation-codes" tables within madicon RSS Reader.
- Support for Feeds, which requires authentication. It seems that pay-feeds are on their way. ;-)
- Support for high-volume Feeds (testet with Feeds up to 300 KBytes). Due to the limitation of text fields (15 KBytes per field with a maximum of 30 KBytes per document) in Notes documents, the content of largers parts of the news (e.g. content:encoded) is stored in MIME format in the news documents. Using that technology, there seems to be no volume limit so far.
- Export your Feeds to an OPML file.
- Import of very large OPML files or OPML directories now works - try http://www.allheadlinenews.com/feeds.opml (640 Feeds) or http://chris.pirillo.com/MySubscriptions.opml (1028 Feeds).
- Open these URL's in your browser and save the content to a file with the extension .opml, if you want to check the import of large OPML files.
- Use the title/channel name entered in the Feed document instead of the informations provided by the Feed itself. Some provider of Feeds use very, very long titles or titles you can't remember easily.
- Rename formerly stored News documents to a new title/channel name. Sometimes, the Feed provider renames the title of his Feed and so the newly fetched news appear under a new channel. Using version 2, you select the "old" documents in one of the News views, and easily use an action buttom to rename them to the new channel.
- Assign formerly stored News documents to a new channel group. Select the news documents in one of the News views and hit an action buttom.
- Some minor changes in the look and feel of the forms.
- These are the most important new or enhanced features. Did I forget something? Maybe. Check it out by your own! :-)
Some screenshots are available here.
Hardeware requirements
No additional hardware is required. madicon RSS Reader can be run on any server according to IBM's specifications for Domino Servers version 6.x.x or above.
Software requirements
madicon RSS Reader requires Lotus Notes/ Domino (from) version 6.x.x or above. Fetching of News (Notes Client and/or Domino Server) is only supported on the MS Windows OS platform.
Licenses
madicon RSS Reader is licensed on a per-user basis.
Prices
All prices apply to the license regulations for the use of madicon RSS Reader, made under the section "licenses".
| Program | Price w/o Tax* | Price to pay |
| madicon RSS Reader 2.x | standard license
(10 users) |
EUR 250.00 | EUR 297.50 |
| madicon RSS Reader 2.x | additional license
(10 more users) |
EUR 237.50 | EUR 282.63 |
| madicon RSS Reader 2.x | license 50 users | EUR 1,125.00 | EUR 1,338.75 |
| madicon RSS Reader 2.x | license 100 users | EUR 2,125.00 | EUR 2,528.75 |
| Forwarding of the license key by email | EUR 0.00 | EUR 0.00 |
If you need more licenses - ask for special conditions.
*) This column exists only because of some regulations from the German fiscal authorities. Every customer has to pay the same price - listed in the right column.
madicon RSS Reader is offered as a download version. There is no boxed version available.
Special offer for individuals
Because people continue asking for it, a single license for private usage is now available according to the following regulations:
- Private use
- Forwarding of your address information to me by email
- Payment by PayPal (you will receive a mail from my PayPal invoice tool)
- Send your invoide (PDF file) and your individual license key by email
- Price: EUR 30.00
Purchase of licenses
Order your licenses from:
Ingenieurbüro Manfred Dillmann
Zähringer Str. 26
D-73230 Kirchheim, Germany
email: software@madicon.de
If you need a much larger number of licenses than offered by the current price scale on PayPal, please send me an email.
Download
With your download of madicon RSS reader you expressly agree with the regulations specified on this website as the copyright and limitation of liability, in addition to the license regulations.
You are allowed to use madicon RSS Reader for a trial period of 30 days. There is a limitation in functionality during the testing period: madicon RSS Reader only fetches new News if the total count of documents in the database is less then 250.
madicon-rss-reader-2.0.3.zip, 210 KBytes, database in Notes R6.x-format
madicon-rss-reader-2.0.3-manual.zip, 50 pages, 715 KBytes, PDF-file, English
Revision: 2008-03-18
Upgrade instructions are included in the manual.
Very Important
Please disable the background agent BEFORE doing the update!
Important
Please read the whole manual. It contains a lot of useful information.
Version history
Version 2.0.3 | 2006-10-10
- Added some more HTML Replacement characters to the internal translation tables.
- Fixed an issue which stopped madicon RSS Reader fetching the news from an Atom Feed.
Added an agent (Menu 'Actions' - > 'Convert content to MIME storage for selected documents') to convert formerly stored News to no longer display the HTML tags while reading a News document (opened or in preview pane).
It's save to select all documents in one of the 'News by' views and run the agent against all documents. Only News documents in the 'old format' will be converted.
Version 2.0.0 | 2005-07-04
- Version 2 will no longer use the LotusScript DOMParser class for parsing the content of the news. In the past there were too many problems with feeds providing buggy XML code. Now I use my own routines to parse the XML code - and they are much more forgiving. With version 2, you will see parsing errors only very rare - if any.
- Manual fetching of news is now done by a Notes Client background thread, if you use the option 'Fetch News by active channels'. You can start reading new News right after the process starts (don't forget to hit the F9 key to refresh the view).
- Full support for the RSS formats: RSS 0.9, RSS 1.0, Netscape RSS 0.91, Userland's RSS 0,91, RSS 0.9x and RSS 2.0.
- Full support for the Atom 0.3 format.
- Full support for FeedBurner feeds. For more information on that topic, read this.
- Correct translation of special characters in UTF-8 coded Feeds.
- Correct translation of nearly all special HTML characters (standard, decimal or hex notation). You probably will no longer need to maintain your own "translation-codes" tables within madicon RSS Reader.
- Support for Feeds, which requires authentication. It seems that pay-feeds are on their way. ;-)
- Support for high-volume Feeds (testet with Feeds up to 300 KBytes). Due to the limitation of text fields (15 KBytes per field with a maximum of 30 KBytes per document) in Notes documents, the content of largers parts of the news (e.g. content:encoded) is stored in MIME format in the news documents. Using that technology, there seems to be no volume limit so far.
- Export your Feeds to an OPML file.
- Import of very large OPML files or OPML directories
now works - try http://www.allheadlinenews.com/feeds.opml
(640 Feeds) or
http://chris.pirillo.com/MySubscriptions.opml (1028
Feeds).
Open these URL's in your browser and save the content to a file with the extension .opml, if you want to check the import of large OPML files. - Use the title/channel name entered in the Feed document instead of the informations provided by the Feed itself. Some provider of Feeds use very, very long titles or titles you can't remember easily.
- Rename formerly stored News documents to a new title/channel name. Sometimes, the Feed provider renames the title of his Feed and so the newly fetched news appear under a new channel. Using version 2, you select the "old" documents in one of the News views, and easily use an action buttom to rename them to the new channel.
- Assign formerly stored News documents to a new channel group. Select the news documents in one of the News views and hit an action buttom.
- Some minor changes in the look and feel of the forms.
- These are the most important new or enhanced features. Did I forget something? Maybe. Check it out by your own! :-)
- Improved utilization of the available place while reading News in the preview window (now you see only the title, link and content of the news).
- The display of the 'Site Icon' (a small picture provided by some feeds) while reading news is now controlled by the 'My Preferences' settings.
- Completely replaced the Java code with LotusScript (Win API calls). There were memory leaks on the agent manager when running the agent on a Domino Server which reappeared with Domino version 6.5.2.
- Added an action button (available in the views: 'Feeds by channel' and 'Feeds by channel group') to import new feeds from an OPML file.
- Fixed an issue while fetching news with a total volume of XML code > 32 KBytes.
- Alternative usage of the item , offered by a few
feeds. More information is available within the software
on the 'My Preferences' settings page.
Use Bruce Elgort's feed for testing at:
http://www.bruceelgort.com/blogs/be.nsf/stories.rss
Fixed a problem on fetching news from an O'Reilly RSS Feed.
Version 1.1.3 | 2004-03-07
Fixed an issue which can occur while fetching newly created Feeds with individual schedule (error message in the log.nsf database on the Domino server: 'Function requires a valid ADT argument').
Version 1.1.2 | 2004-03-04
One user reported a problem with manually fetching feeds with DTDs (Document Type Definitions). Fixed.
Version 1.1.1 | 2004-03-03
Some users reported, that the agent did run local on the Notes Client, but not on a Domino Server. Creating a new database solved the problem and now it works. I really don't know, what exactly the reason was.
Version 1.1 | 2004-02-27
- Fetch News schedule
The global interval (System Preferences) is now adjustable starting at 30 minutes up to 24 hours. - Fetch News schedule on a per-feed basis
Use the global interval (defined by System Preferences) or individually adjust the interval per Feed starting at 30 minutes up to 48 hours (= 2 days).
Fixed an issue related to timezone processing. Only few people will have - if ever - noticed this.
Version 1.04 | 2004-02-17
Fixed the problem with displaying date/time on systems configured to use US date format (MM/DD/YYYY). Generally, it should now works with any date format because of detecting the currently used format form the operation system settings. However, it only works on newly fetched News.
Version 1.0.2 | 2004-02-13
- Views: Adjusted the column width to show the date-time without line break.
- Views: All View settings (even the order of columns) are changeable by the user. Notes remember your modifications. Take a look at the menu 'View' -> 'Customize This View' within the Notes Client.
- Feed documents: Adjusted the width of the fields 'Created' and 'Modified' to show date-time information without line break.
The content of the item was not displayed correcty within madicon RSS Reader for some few feeds. Fixed.
Version 1.0 | 2004-02-08
First available public version.