149 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
149 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
# minrss, a lightweight feed reader
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2023-05-14
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## purpose
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If you want to read content online from many different websites, the best way is to subscribe to RSS or Atom feeds.
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It's a simple, universal format for getting content onto your screen.
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I personally enjoy living in the terminal.
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One of the more popular RSS readers for this environment is [Newsboat](https://newsboat.org/).
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Newsboat has tons of useful features and a pretty TUI, and I did use it for a while.
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However, I thought that it was too complex for what I needed in an RSS reader.
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Therefore, I decided to write a new one: MinRSS.
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## concept
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MinRSS is a small binary that "does one thing and does it well":
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it downloads RSS articles to disk.
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Essentially, every feed is represented as a
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folder, and individual articles are files in these folders.
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Every time the binary is run, it creates a structure like this in the current working
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directory:
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rss
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|--news
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| |--article1
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| `--article2
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`--blog
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|--post
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`--other_post
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If an article is new (it wasn't on disk already), its filename is printed to standard output.
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The goal of doing things this way is to make writing scripts as easy as possible.
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If you're familiar with shell scripting, all you need is `jq`
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and you can now parse RSS and implement any custom feature you want.
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If you felt masochistic, you could even read RSS feeds using only your shell, `minrss`, `ls`, `head` and `w3m`.
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This sort of structure is inspired by suckless.org's
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[ii](http://tools.suckless.org/ii/) and [sic](http://tools.suckless.org/sic/).
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### wrapper script
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I wrote my own wrapper script around MinRSS, called `mrss`.
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It has the following features:
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- Update feeds using MinRSS
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- Show all new articles using `fzf` as an interface (as seen in the screenshot above)
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- Mark articles as read
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- Mark articles as "watch later"
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- Custom handler for opening videos and podcasts in `mpv`
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## installation
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First, ensure you have the requirements:
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- libcurl
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- libxml2
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- json-c
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- xdg-open
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Clone the repo:
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git clone https://github.com/dogeystamp/minrss
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cd minrss
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Edit the config file.
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The comments in `config.h` should guide you:
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cp config.def.h config.h
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vim config.h
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MinRSS outputs human-readable output by default.
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The wrapper script will only work with these options set:
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static const enum outputFormats outputFormat = OUTPUT_JSON;
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static const enum summaryFormats summaryFormat = SUMMARY_FILES;
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Then, build and install MinRSS:
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make install
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Install the wrapper script:
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cp contrib/mrss.sh ~/.local/bin/mrss
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chmod 755 ~/.local/bin/mrss
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## usage
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For complete help, run `mrss -h`.
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To get started, all you need is `mrss update` to update feeds, then `mrss fzf` to view articles.
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Articles are, by default, saved to `~/rss`, but you can set `$MRSS_DIR` to change this.
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#### fzf shortcuts
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In `mrss fzf`'s interface, the following commands are available:
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| Command | Shortcut | Description |
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| ------- | -------- | ----------- |
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| `/read` | `Enter` | Opens link in the browser or `mpv` |
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| `/purge` | `Ctrl-D` | Mark article as read |
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| `/purge-all` | `Ctrl-Alt-D` | Mark all articles as read |
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| `/watch-later` | `Ctrl-W` | Send article to the watch-later folder |
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| `/queue` | `Ctrl-E` | Queues link to be opened after leaving `fzf` |
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You can also use `Tab` and `Shift-Tab` to select multiple articles to be acted upon.
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#### viewing specific folders
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The `mrss fzf` command can be used to view a specific folder's contents.
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To read all null-program articles (regardless of if they are marked read or not):
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mrss fzf null-program
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To view new null-program articles:
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mrss fzf new/null-program
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To see articles you've marked as "watch later":
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mrss fzf watch-later
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#### creating meta-feeds
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In the latest version of mrss, you can create tags to categorize your feeds.
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First, create a directory for your tag under `$MRSS_DIR`:
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mkdir ~/rss/tag
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To include new articles for a given feed:
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ln -sr ~/rss/new/feed ~/rss/tag/
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To include all articles:
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ln -sr ~/rss/feed ~/rss/tag/
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To view this tag:
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mrss fzf tag
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