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Introduction
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============
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pyferea is my solution to [this
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email](http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2011/07/msg01362.html) that I posted
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to the debian-users list in 2011. I was fed up with there being no sane RSS
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reader in existance that could just render some RSS entries in a fast and
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simple fashion.
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Quick Start
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===========
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Create a feeds.yaml (you can copy feeds.yaml.example) and then run:
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$ python pyferea.py
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Naming
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======
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It is called pyferea (python feed reader) for now as I was inspired by the
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layout of liferea (linux feed reader). I guess I'm just too lazy to come up
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with another name but suggestions are welcome. Pyferea is just the first thing
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that sprang to my mind when I had to give the sourcecode directory a name and I
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didnt change it since.
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Purpose
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=======
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I might really overlook something out there but everytime I checked there was
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no sane RSS feed reader out there that would please me. I did not think that I
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would require much. Just three panes for feeds, entries and content, keeping
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record of unread entries and rendering content in a browser. Liferea came close
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but was poisoned by feature bloat (as many others... especially gnome
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dependencies) and major slowness. On top of that it created a new feed entry
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everytime I accidentally drag&drop something. I call all of those bugs and they
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never got fixed. Pyferea does just what I want, is simple, DE agnostic (uses
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python and gtk) and fits in about 1000 lines of code.
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Pyferea is for you if you want:
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- an offline feed reader
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- no gnome, KDE, mono dependencies
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- no rss reader as a browser plugin
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- not terminal based, hence webbrowser for rendering
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Bugs
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====
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Pyferea as it is now is enough for my daily use but there are still some issues
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that need to be fixed: the back/forward functionality of the browser must be
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fixed in certain cases (i seldomly use it) and the text in the
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addressbar, title and tabtitle must be synced. I will fix that once I feel like
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it. If anybody feels inclined to do so, then patches are welcome.
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Dependencies
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============
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apt-get install python-gobject python-yaml python-lxml python-feedparser gir1.2-webkit-3.0
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As of February 2012, the dependency size of the following feed readers in a
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fresh Debian Sid minimal chroot:
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pyferea: 172MB
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liferea: 225MB
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gpodder: 226MB
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blam: 408MB
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akregator: 758MB
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Keyboard shortcuts
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==================
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To make it faster to switch between the three panes and scroll in them, use the
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keys 1, 2 and 3 to select the first, second or third pane respectively.
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feeds.yaml
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==========
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It is a yaml dictionary with rss/atom feeds as keys and subdictionaries as
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values. For each entry they store the category a feed is in and if the link
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given in a feed entry should be loaded instead of the feed text.
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Example:
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```yaml
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http://planet.debian.org/rss20.xml:
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category: "IT news"
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loadlink: False
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http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rss:
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category: "IT news"
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loadlink: True
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```
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Cookies
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=======
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Cookies are kept in cookies.txt and are automatically accepted
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ythtml5.js
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==========
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A javascript that I load upon each pageload to convert youtube videos into
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their html5 versions so that the webkit plugin can render them even withoutme
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having flash.
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Files
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=====
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pyferea.db
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- database of retrieved feeds
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- resides in local directory or in $XDG_DATA_HOME/pyferea/
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feeds.yaml
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- list of feeds urls to retrieve
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- resides in local directory, in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pyferea/ or as
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an example file as /usr/share/pyferea/feeds.yaml.example
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javascript
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- all javascript files that are to be executed after page load reside in
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$XDG_DATA_HOME/pyferea/ or in /usr/share/pyferea/ and identify themselves
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by having the ".js" extension
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Possible future work
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====================
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(patches welcome)
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- build debian package
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- load javascript selectively and not for every page
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- i18n
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- downloading (only gui code missing)
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- list of unread items
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- make re-sorting fast
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