1SNOWNEWS(1) Snownews 1.5.12 SNOWNEWS(1)
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6 snownews - console RSS newsreader
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9 snownews [-huV] [--help|--update|--version]
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12 Snownews is a console RSS/RDF news reader. It supports all versions of
13 RSS natively and can be expanded via plugins to support many other
14 other formats.
15 The main program screen, that is shown right after you start snownews,
17 lets you add/remove feeds and update them manually. On the right side
18 of the screen the number of new items is shown for every newsfeed. To
19 add a feed press 'a' and enter the URL. This can be either a http:// or
20 a feed:// URL. If you omit the protocol specifier snownews asumes the
21 HTTP protocol. To delete a listed feed highlight it with the cursor
22 keys and press 'D'. A dialog will ask for confirmation.
23 You can navigate through the main menu with up and down arrow keys or
25 with 'n' and 'p'. The keys page up/page down, b/space and HOME/END,
26 </> will scroll a page up or down and to the first or last entry
27 respectively. Pressing 'r' reloads the highlighted feed from the
28 server, 'R' updates all feeds in your list and 'T' refreshes the feed
29 ignoring any cache control data. That means, even if the feed has not
30 been modified on the server, Snownews will still download the file.
31 The program will not sort this list alphabetically by default. You can
33 move items up and down by pressing 'P' and 'N'. To sort the feed list
34 alphabetically, press 's'.
35 If you highlight a feed and hit Enter the program will display every
37 item for this feed. Navigation in all sub menus works as usual. If you
38 press 'r' the program will reload the current feed. Items may vanish
39 from the list completely and new newsitems will appear bold or in
40 colour.
41 Select an item and hit Enter to read its description. If there is none
43 attached to it the text "No description available." will be displayed
44 instead. You can use the arrow keys left and right, repectively 'p' and
45 'n' to select the previous or next newsitem in the list. Pressing 'o'
46 will open the link (usually the complete news text) in the browser.
47 The default browser is lynx, but you can change this by pressing 'B' in
49 the main menu and entering a new default browser. Or you can edit the
50 file ~/.snownews/browser. The program replaces %s with the URL when
51 expanding the string.
52 You can rename a feed by pressing the key 'c' and entering its new
54 name. To reset its name to the original title enter '-' in this
55 textfield.
56 A context help window is available everytime by pressing 'h'.
58 Type Ahead Find
60 For faster navigation in your feedlist you can use Snownews' Type Ahead
62 Find feature. Press the TAB key and the statusline will change into a
63 text entry field. While you enter the text you want to search for,
64 highlight will be automatically placed on items as they match. If you
65 have selected an item just press enter to open the feed. If there are
66 multiple items matching you can switch between them by pressing TAB. To
67 quit Type Ahead delete the search text or press CTRL+G
68 Categories
70 Snownews uses categories to manage large subscription lists. You can
72 define as many categories for a feed as you like. You can then apply a
73 filter in the main menu that will only show feeds that have a matching
74 category defined. Feeds with a category will have it printed next to
75 their name in the main menu.
76 To add or remove a feed from a category, press 'C' while the feed is
78 highlighted in the main menu. If you already have defined categories
79 for other feeds you'll get a list of the existing categories. Just
80 press its number to add the current feed to this category. To add the
81 feed to a new category, press 'A' and enter the name of the new cate‐
82 gory. If you want to remove a feed from a category, just press its num‐
83 ber in the feed categorization GUI.
84 You can see all defined categories for a feed in the feed info.
86 Customizing keybindings
88 You can customize the keybindings by editing the file ~/.snownews/key‐
90 bindings. The format is "function description:key". Do not change the
91 string "function description". The single character behind the colon
92 represents the key the program will associate with the corresponding
93 function. If you delete a definition or the program cannot parse the
94 file for some reason the default settings will be used instead.
95 Colours
97 If you prefer to see the world in colours you can enable (and config‐
99 ure) colour support in Snownews. Edit the file ~/.snownews/colors. To
100 globally enable colours in the program, set enabled to "1". To set a
101 colour, use the colour key value that is listed in the comment in that
102 file. You can disable usage for single items by using the value "-1".
103 HTML conversion
105 Snownews will try to convert HTML content into plain text before dis‐
107 playing the text. Tags will be stripped alltogether and some common
108 HTML entities will be translated. By default only the five entities
109 defined in XML (< (<), > (>), & (&), " (") and '
110 (')) plus a default setting included will be translated. You can influ‐
111 ence this behaviour with the definition file at ~/.snownews/html_enti‐
112 ties. See the comments on top of the file for further details.
113 Importing/exporting subscriptions from other programs:
115 Snownews can import opml subscription files from other RSS readers into
117 its own format with the included program "opml2snow". To convert an
118 opml subscription file type "opml2snow MySubsriptions.opml" with MySub‐
119 scriptions.opml being the name of the file you want to convert. The
120 program will print the converted data to stdout. Use "opml2snow
121 file.opml >converted" to put the converted data into the file "con‐
122 verted" or "opml2snow file.opml >>~/.snownews/urls" to append it to
123 snownews' subscription list.
124 You can also export snownews' internal format to an OPML file with
126 "opml2snow --export".
127 See "opml2snow -h" or its manpage for more usage examples.
129 HTTP client features
131 Snownews' HTTP client will follow HTTP server redirects. If the URL you
133 have entered points to a permanent redirect it will update the internal
134 URL to reflect the new location. Requests will be automatically sent to
135 the new location from now on.
136 Snownews supports HTTP authentication and Cookies. To subscribe to a
138 feed that requires authentication, use an URL http://username:pass‐
139 word@server/feed.rss. You can use cookies to supply log in information
140 to a webserver. Put the cookies you want Snownews to use into the file
141 ~/.snownews/cookies. The file has to be in standard Netscape cook‐
142 ies.txt file format. Mozilla uses this format for example. Snownews
143 will automatically send the right cookies to the right webserver. You
144 can also just place a symlink to your browser's cookie file, but it is
145 not recommended. If a cookie is expired, Snownews will print a warning
146 on program start and not use the cookie. If a cookie is marked as
147 secure (only to be used via an SSL secured connection) Snownews will
148 also discard the cookie.
149 If you need to use a proxy server to access the internet, set the envi‐
151 ronment variable "http_proxy". Snownews expects this variable to be in
152 the format http://your_proxy.org:PORT/
153 (http://proxy.your_isp.com:8080/).
154 Plugins
156 Snownews has a plugin architecture that allows to load feeds from
158 external scripts or pipe downloaded contents through a filter. Such a
159 filter could be an Atom to RSS converter for example. The snownews web‐
160 site has a section with publically available extensions. See
161 http://snownews.kcore.de/snowscripts/.
162 There are two types of filters: execurls and filters.
164 Execurls are scripts that produce a valid RSS file by themselves. You
166 can add such extensions by subscribing to a feed "exec:/path/to/exten‐
167 sion".
168 Filters convert a downloaded resource on the fly. You usually subscribe
170 to an URL that is a webpage or a non-RSS feed. If snownews asks you if
171 you want to use a filter, because it couldn't parse the resource, enter
172 the location of your script. You can also add filters to exisiting sub‐
173 scriptions by highlighting the feed and pressing 'e' in the main menu.
174 For further documentation about this feature, please visit the website
176 http://snownews.kcore.de/snowscripts/.
177 Snownews is released under the GNU General Public License version 2.
179
181 --charset or -l, Force using this charset. Snownews tries to guess the
182 correct charset of your terminal, but if fails, this option can be used
183 to force using a specific one.
184 --cursor-on or -c, Always display the cursor on the screen.
186 --update or -u, Automatically update all subscribed feeds when the
188 application starts.
189 --help or -h, Show usage summary and available command line options and
191 exit.
192 --version or -V, Print program version and exit.
194
196 /usr/bin/snownews
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199 http_proxy
200 Snownews will access the internet through the proxy server set
201 in this variable. The expected format is
202 http://your_proxy.org:PORT/.
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205 Reporting bugs
206 If you think you found a bug in Snownews, please report it. Anything
208 that makes the program crash, regardless what you're doing is a bug and
209 needs to be fixed. XML parsing errors are probably not fixable in
210 Snownews since libxml is responsible for parsing a document's XML.
211 Though you can report problematic feeds anyway, it may be a bug in
212 Snownews.
213 Please read http://kiza.kcore.de/software/snownews/faq#toc4 before you
215 report a bug.
216
219 opml2snow(1).
220
223 Oliver Feiler <kiza@kcore.de>
224Programs 22 October 2004 SNOWNEWS(1)