[development] authenticated RSS feed

[alex at owal.co.uk]

> The problem is, none of the content is viewable without being an
> authenticated
> user.  RSS readers, like Thunderbird (the greatest unknown RSS reader :-),
> don't know how to log into Drupal to download the feeds.

Hmmmm,

Lets assume for a moment that we are using Basic Authentication instead of
Drupal's own. In such a case lots of RSS readers could supply a user and
password - possibly even by specifying the URL in the form

http://user:pass@www.site.com/path/page

Presumably the RSS fetcher understands this format and supplies the
username and password when the web server asks for that info.

Now - this leads me to wonder whether Drupal authentication and Basic
Authentication might be combined somehow - or possibly have a separate
page controlled by basic authentication which is internally proxied to the
Drupal RSS page.

Sorry for the rambling reply :-)

Alex