RSS and Atom

What are feeds?

Feeds are used to inform visitors of a site of the upgrades made on the site they are interested in. Every time a webpage is being updated, the webmaster can decide to update the contents of a little xml-file which links to the new or renewed pages of the website. Peeters Online Journals uses these feeds to keep people informed of the updates of a journal. Each time an abstract or an issue is added, the feed is updated.

How can I use these feeds?

In order to be able to read these feeds you need a newsreader.

Firstly, some internet browsers can read this feed right in the browser window. Simply copy the RSS-url (http://poj.peeters-leuven/RSS/XXX.xml) to the news bookmark.

Browser	Version
Safari	2.0 or above
Mozilla Firefox (download: )	1.0.4 or above

Secondly, some mailclients, as Thunderbird (1.0.2 or above; download:

), can read these feeds adding them to the newsgroups. You receive the newsfeeds as mail into your mailbox. After installing the program set up a news account (tools - account settings) and add the RSS-url (http://poj.peeters-leuven/RSS/XXX.xml) to it. Choose if you like to see the webpage directly on your screen or if you rather receive the abstracts.

Finally you can download freeware RSS- or Atom-readers (see allrss.com). In these programs you receive the updates as a kind of emails in your mailbox. The mails of our feeds include the full reference, the abstract and link to the Peeters Online Journals. As RSS/Atom-feeds are a free service, you still have to go to the site and download the file according to your subscription state.

RSS or Atom?

If you wonder wether to choose RSS or Atom, please read this first. RSS, or Really Simple Syndicate is the widespread standard for newsfeeds. Recently a new standard is emerging, namely Atom which is more complex than RSS, but fits better within the perspectives of future internet applications. The feeds have the same result for the daily user, but Atom contains more and better defined metadata.

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative - compliant

The feeds created for Peeters Online Journals are compliant with the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (http://dublincore.org/) as they use RSS 2.0 and Atom 0.9. This initiative provides standard names in the markup language, facilitating the internet search.