FasterSlasher is a Perl script that displays a list of articles or headlines taken from a remote RSS or RDF file. Basically, you feed FasterSlasher the URL of an RSS file on the web & it will fetch the file, interpret the XML coding & display a nicely formatted list.

Output can be formatted for full-page display or SSI use. Other controls include the number of headlines/articles shown & whether descriptions are displayed in addition to titles.

XML parsing is handled by the Perl module XML::RSSLite. This is not a "standard" Perl module & your ISP may not support it. But it's easy to install locally in your own cgi-bin. (Details included in the download file.)

• Example A: Headline listing embedded in this page using SSI. Display of item descriptions is enabled. The number of titles is set to allow this site's RSS list to "max out"...

  [an error occurred while processing this directive]

• Example B: The link below will open a full-page display for kuro5hin.org & descriptions are provided in addition to titles...

  Open a full page listing with descriptions (kuro5hin.org uses verbose descriptions!).

• Example C: The same headlines but without the descriptions & constrained to 8 headlines.

  Open a full page listing without descriptions

In general, the SSI method is easier for most folks to use, since style sheets & other markups can be set conventionally. The full-page method requires some editing of the Perl source in order to incorporate style sheets or fancy formatting.

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