readGmane <-
readXML(spec = list(author = list("node", "/item/creator"),
                    content = list("node", "/item/description"),
                    datetimestamp = list("function", function(node)
                    strptime(sapply(XML::getNodeSet(node, "/item/date"), XML::xmlValue),
                             format = "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S",
                             tz = "GMT")),
                    description = list("unevaluated", ""),
                    heading = list("node", "/item/title"),
                    id = list("node", "/item/link"),
                    origin = list("unevaluated", "Gmane Mailing List Archive")),
                    doc = PlainTextDocument())Run the code above in your browser using DataLab