Hi there, and thanks for providing such a detailed description of the problem. Just so we have a complete picture, can you tell us which version of Thunderbird you're using, and which OS?

I'm an RSS junkie myself (and the creator of that blog and video you referenced), so hopefully I can lend a hand!

I've verified that all of the feeds you've posted indeed work perfectly in something like Feeder for Firefox, despite the majority of them NOT validating according to an independent RSS/XML validation service. The feed owners should edit their code for maximum compatibility.

Still, I definitely understand your frustration.

I'm not personally aware if this is a bug, or if Thunderbird is just being too strict about how it deals with the structure and formatting of web feeds, but I'm going to talk to the team today and see if we can get to the bottom of this.

I know this isn't a solution, but I wanted to let you know someone with a very passionate interest in RSS is working to solve this for ya.

Please stay tuned, and thanks for using Thunderbird.

Hi Jason [& yes, i immediately recognised your name from said excellent blog/YT, teehee].

I have no idea why the final two lines of my OP were truncated, as i had explicitly remembered to add the info you've requested when i wrote it, given it's ofc essential for logical troubleshooting. Here is what somehow "fell off" my OP:

TB 102.3.3 (64-bit) ArchLinux KDE Plasma 5.26.0

I'm a natural glass-half-empty kinda gal, so don't really expect there'll be any fast solution forthcoming. However, i would eagerly accept being proven wrong, haha.

Thanks for your help, & energy!

I'm glad you're a glass-half-empty gal, because there isn't a solution that works in favor of your continued enjoyment of RSS feeds in Thunderbird...

I spoke with the team, and while there are workarounds for some of the minor RSS validation errors (for example, removing a whitespace character at the beginning of a feed), doing that would lead to these kinds of errors becoming even more widespread.

We acknowledge that many other RSS feed readers ARE implementing some workarounds, which is why you can read those feeds you listed in your original post properly. But they're not documenting how. And ultimately, the web feeds specifications were designed years ago to ensure maximum compatibility.

So, if we implement workarounds too, we're just "kicking the problem" over to the next less popular client.

All of this is to say that the spirit of open source means we should be helping to solve the problem for all other users, contributing solutions "upstream."

Our way of doing that, for now, is to actually fix the code on Mozilla's nightly Github repository and submit something called a "Pull Request." This will fix the feed for you inside Thunderbird, and likely for many other users on various other RSS apps.

Beyond that, I'll take the responsibility of contacting the owners or website developers for the other feeds you've listed, and explaining to them how to properly validate their RSS feeds. (They may not even be aware that they've stopped validating, so contacting them is often more than half the battle).

As a fellow RSS enthusiast, I know this is a bummer, but we think it's the only right way to deal with this.

REALLY appreciate you posting here, and thanks for using Thunderbird!

Wrt your ...

> All of this is to say that the spirit of open source means we should be helping to solve the problem for all other users, contributing solutions "upstream."

... i wish to reassure you that this is a good thing in my book! Given after all that i'm a Nixer, & using FF-Nightly as my default browser [well, ahem, back to Beta atm coz an overnight Nightly update has borked it really well, heehe], & Thunderbird, et al, i nailed my colours to the GNU/FOSS ethos years ago.

Consequently, your ...

> to actually fix the code on Mozilla's nightly Github repository and submit something called a "Pull Request." This will fix the feed for you inside Thunderbird, and likely for many other users on various other RSS apps.

...and...

> we think it's the only right way to deal with this

...also get thumbs-up from me.

Yes, ofc it would have been lovely if you'd been able to come back to me overnight & with a wave of your magic wand eliminated the problem in my TB instantly. However, i rather stopped believing in fairy-tales & magic spells way back in .... oh let me think ... why yes, as long ago as last month!

So fwiw, fyi, i think for now my least-worst action plan will be to leave all my feeds structure still setup in TB, but disable all TB feed updates, continue using my browser for active feed reading, & keep a weather-eye on this thread to watch for any signs of progress that might indicate a benefit in trying again at a future TB update.

I'm so grateful for your eager help Jason, it's great! Thanks heaps.

Ok, the easy part is done: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/pull/12262 The Firefox Nightly release notes feed now validates!

Onto the rest :D

I've also reached out to Omnycontent.com engineers, and they said they'll contact the show owners and ask them to add the missing information to their feeds (such as website URL).

Thanks, good start.

Yep it works now for me. Pity though about the unhelpful timestamp repetition, albeit i acknowledge that many RSS AddOns also do this, so i assume it's some basic weakness in the whole industry-wide RSS algorithm, clearly not merely a TB problem [?].

https://i.postimg.cc/C50wfVGG/2022-10-21-19-56-39.png

Hi Jason, there's no further updates in this thread, so i presume that probably also means there's no progress happened on this problem elsewhere? Might i benefit by changing to the TB Beta instead of Release version, in case some RSS improvement has occurred there?