Avoid a 'feeds not updating' issue in NetNewsWire

Jan 31, '07 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: robg

The following is really obscure, and I might be the only one who was bit by this particular behavior. However, it's also a perfect example of why I launched macosxhints many years ago: it's something that I'll probably forget over time, and I wanted to have a place to documenmt it, in case I run into the problem again in the future.

I presently use NetNewsWire (NNW) as my RSS reader of choice. I'm generally happy with it, but one of the things I wish it had was the ability to add divider bars between groups of RSS feeds. I have already organized the feeds using groups, but I want the ability to visually group those groups together. All Mac-related groups in one section, then a divider bar, then general news groups in another section, etc.

Since NNW doesn't include a divider feature, I decided to make my own. I just created a new group, and named it all dashes: ----------------------. I duplicated this group, and then placed each duplicate where I wanted dividers. Not nearly as nice as a simple graphic divider bar, but it worked. Since these groups weren't RSS feeds, I checked the Don't refresh this subscription box in the group's Info window (why bother trying to update a nonsensical group?).

This worked great for a while, until I decided that I wanted to name my groups, and put my groups of RSS feeds within those larger groups. So I changed the dividers' names. Instead of ----------------------, I now have things like --- News ------ and --- Tech tips -------, etc. I then put my groups of RSS feeds into these groups, and thought all was well. And all seemed well, until I noticed a couple days later than not all my feeds were updating.

You've probably guessed by now, but it turns out that if you put a group of feeds within a folder, and that folder is marked to never be updated, then the feeds within that folder also won't get updated! This doesn't seem right to me, but it's how things are presently working. As soon as I told NNW that it was OK to refresh my top-level group folders, the RSS feeds within those folders started updating again.

Comments (5)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070130064833430