[jdev] Re: weather data over Jabber

[Trejkaz Xaoza]

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 23:26, Tijl Houtbeckers wrote:
> Heh, you're gonna write a weather bot that describes the current weather?
> It's fine by me you know, you can do it with this XML file I'm sure, but
> some people might find it usefull to be able to give predictions about
> the weather as well. You only need to retrieve the file once.. some user
> might want a 3 day forecast, some might want to know about this evening,
> etc.

The existing bot describes the current weather.  I wanted to do forecasts as 
well, as I've already mentioned.  But forecasts and current data are 
different creatures, and using XML like they have, not grouping the relevant 
data together, makes for difficult usage.  I would prefer to go to an element 
which has all the data for a single date and time, than go hunting around the 
document to pick up bits and pieces from all over the place, as they would 
have you do.

But what is your objection to using other means for getting data for other
days? Why can't three different forecasts be three different pubsub items? 
Or shall we just throw that feature of pubsub out of the window and go for
single, gigantic documents for everything in Jabber which uses pubsub?

> Because that would suit your needs, not someone else their needs. And if
> they would just suit their needs, they wouldn't suit your needs. Sure
> they could have split it up in different files and what not, maybe they
> have (did you look around?), maybe they will, maybe they won't. It's
> their job to provide weather data. The file is still very small, and if
> you care about file size maybe you should be parsing their own custum
> binary format rather than XML.

I only care about file size because I don't want to spam a whole week of
weather data down an IM channel every half an hour to a hundred or more users.  
It should be more than sufficient to require people to (a) remember the 
previous data, or (b) make subsequent requests for the older data.

> The claims were that this file was filled with rubbish and not human
> readable. But actually, it's quite human readable (since I'm human, and
> could read it and understand it in 1 go without any documentation
> whatsoever), and there is little, if any rubbish in there.  Might be a
> few things you don't *understand* in there, doesn't mean they are useless
> to others (in particular, those who read documentation).
>
> While we're at it, the way they use it much MORE human readable than what
> you propose. 48 what?

Perhaps you missed the part of my email where I mentioned _standardising_ the
units.  Make it whatever unit the majority of people will use (in this
case, Celsius) and everyone else can translate it to whatever they want.

> It's like I would give you a free dinner, and you'd complain that
> there's carrots on the menu (you don't even LIKE carrots)

The funny thing is... I probably would complain in that situation.

But it's not like those guys are the only ones giving away a free meal.  
Weather.com give their data out in XML format, and their data is more 
comprehensive, at least geographically.  There are two other XML formats for 
weather which I've found so far, and of the four, Weather.com's is easiest to 
understand.  Unfortunately it's not open. :-/

> > P.S. You don't need to send a copy to me and the list.  I don't need to
> > receive the email twice.
>
> Well, then you shouldn't have added a reply-to: header with your address
> in it to your email. In case you don't know that means "send a reply to
> this address".

It's still considered bad form to send doubles in the case of mailing
lists. I'm on the mailing list, sending a separate copy to me isn't helping
anything... come to think of it, it's odd that the mailing list isn't 
overwriting the header to make replies go back to the list.

TX

-- 
             Email: Trejkaz Xaoza <trejkaz at trypticon.org>
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