I have recently started experimenting with WinUI 3 and decided to develop a simple feed reader with it. It currently has support for RSS/Atom feeds, as well as experimental support for a Hacker News feed provider.
There are two key differences between the syndication feed provider and the HN provider:
- The content type: The syndication feed provider only supports "article" content which is just a string with rich text formatting. The HN feed provider allows Fluent Feeds to download and display the complete comment tree for every item right inside the app.
- The content storage: When a syndication feed is synchronized, its complete content is stored in a local database – including the item content. This is not necessary for the HN feed provider as it loads the comments using the API whenever the user selects the item for the first time or when the user manually reloads the content.
In addition, the HN feed provider is a demonstration of the app's modular approach. Once plugin support is implemented, it will probably be provided as a separate plugin that can be added by the user.
Is there any reason that this just doesn't use the hacker news feeds? What is the benefit of special-casing?