Earlier today I thought, very possibly incorrectly, that Fargo's isFeedItem attribute already enabled or might someday enable a writer to compose new parts of an article or book chapter in a non-calendar section of outline that was instantly offered to readers for feedback in the RSS feed. It seemed like a masterpiece and for a time this morning I was sure we were already there. (Now I can't tell.)

What's the big deal, you ask? It's mind-numbing to reshape a time-sequence of blog entries by hand into an idea-sequence of chapter paragraphs, and if isFeedItem + RSS can't readily achieve the idea-based organization of a chapter or book draft along with the time-based organization of a blog feed, then this powerful twin act of organizing might be accomplished in other ways.

To summarize more plainly: you want to post once but have the new content take its place accurately among the other ideas as well as its correct place in RSS and on the calendar pages. Now you have to do hand-reorganizing to make that happen, I think.

Other possible approaches:

1. Redirect. This would be, I think, carried out by hand by the writer, who would post a new section of the article or chapter, then copy it into the blog/rss stream where it could receive feedback. I'd love to avoid this kind of double-entry work and I imagine there is a way around it.

2. A script. Perhaps a script could copy a new section of outline from its place in the article or chapter directly into the blog/rss section of the named outline, where again it could be improved by the feedback of readers. Or vice versa: compose in the calendar section, scripted over to the chapter/article section?

3. Or maybe, as I imagined earlier today, isFeedItem can draw non-calendar article/chapter sections into the blog/RSS stream for feedback automatically.

It seems like we are on the verge of breaking the space-time link for serial web publications and making easy idea-based organization simultaneous with time-based organization.

Please read this brief slide show playfully or maybe give it a pass--thanks.

Earlier I asked: How does isFeedItem work outside the calendar? Or does it?

I wanted to understand how or if the isFeedItem attribute works on posts that are not in the chronological stream of the Fargo calendar. I posted something as a test and promised to report back. As far as I can tell, the presentation I posted, including the isFeedItem attribute, did not join my RSS feed.

And here is the question I was trying to answer: if non-calendar posts can appear in the main RSS feed or perhaps be in a folder-like outline area that has its own feed, then RSS would become involved in a break from chronology, potentially, and you could write a book or article that would have an RSS feed for the segments in development (I am guessing).

I believe this would be a huge change for web writers who know the power of serial publication (blog, Twitter, etc.) but want to write idea-structured material (articles, books). Instead of time-intensively editing a blog into a book chapter, a writer could write the chapter and also engage readers serially via RSS.

If isFeedItem=true works, or could work, outside the calendar structure of Fargo, then the idea-based structure could come first and the time-based serial publication could flow instantly from it, via RSS. If this is true, then Fargo would have broken the space-time continuum that leads to great blog content sliding down the screen into the archive where it almost always dies a sad, peaceful death.

Working on hunches here, prepared to be wrong. The code may simply not allow it. But the possibility is breath-taking and mind-bending.

This post is updated here.

Suddenly I need to understand how or if the isFeedItem attribute works on posts that are not in the chronological stream of the Fargo calendar. I will post something as a test and report back.