I’m used to reading newsgroups, where the responses are threaded (i.e. appear underneath the main entry).
In RSS Bandit, this feature seems to be on the list for the next release. In the meantime, the solution appears to be twofold:
- On (WordPress, at least) blogs, there’s two feeds: one for posted entries, and one for comments. This means two feeds per blog, for the ones in which I’m really interested.
- There’s a UnconditionalCommentRss feature described in the RSS Bandit Forum, as well as under Bandit Help (under Advanced Topics … Advanced Configuration Topics … Supported Options …). This seems to work on WordPress blogs only (and not Blogspot or Xanga). This doesn’t appear to download all of the comments when the feed is refreshed, but only when selected.
This is a minor temporary shortcoming that I can live with. I’m getting to be a fan of RSS Bandit. One thing I’ve learned, though, is that it’s better to leave the history of entries “marked as read” rather than to delete them. (I guess I’ll worry about space considerations, later.)