1SNOWNEWS(1) Snownews 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 re‐
27 spectively. Pressing 'r' reloads the highlighted feed from the server,
28 'R' updates all feeds in your list and 'T' refreshes the feed ignoring
29 any cache control data. That means, even if the feed has not been modi‐
30 fied 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 ~/.config/snownews/browser. The program replaces %s with the URL
51 when 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 ~/.con‐
90 fig/snownews/keybindings. The format is "function description:key". Do
91 not change the string "function description". The single character be‐
92 hind the colon represents the key the program will associate with the
93 corresponding function. If you delete a definition or the program can‐
94 not parse the file for some reason the default settings will be used
95 instead.
96 Colours
98 If you prefer to see the world in colours you can enable (and config‐
100 ure) colour support in Snownews. Edit the file ~/.config/snownews/col‐
101 ors. To globally enable colours in the program, set enabled to "1". To
102 set a colour, use the colour key value that is listed in the comment in
103 that file. You can disable usage for single items by using the value
104 "-1".
105 HTML conversion
107 Snownews will try to convert HTML content into plain text before dis‐
109 playing the text. Tags will be stripped alltogether and some common
110 HTML entities will be translated. By default only the five entities de‐
111 fined in XML (< (<), > (>), & (&), " (") and ' ('))
112 plus a default setting included will be translated. You can influence
113 this behaviour with the definition file at ~/.config/snownews/html_en‐
114 tities. See the comments on top of the file for further details.
115 HTTP client features
117 Snownews' HTTP client will follow HTTP server redirects. If the URL you
119 have entered points to a permanent redirect it will update the internal
120 URL to reflect the new location. Requests will be automatically sent to
121 the new location from now on.
122 Snownews supports HTTP authentication and Cookies. To subscribe to a
124 feed that requires authentication, use an URL http://username:pass‐
125 word@server/feed.rss. You can use cookies to supply log in information
126 to a webserver. Put the cookies you want Snownews to use into the file
127 ~/.config/snownews/cookies. The file has to be in standard Netscape
128 cookies.txt file format. Mozilla uses this format for example. Snownews
129 will automatically send the right cookies to the right webserver. You
130 can also just place a symlink to your browser's cookie file, but it is
131 not recommended. If a cookie is expired, Snownews will print a warning
132 on program start and not use the cookie. If a cookie is marked as se‐
133 cure (only to be used via an SSL secured connection) Snownews will also
134 discard the cookie.
135 If you need to use a proxy server to access the internet, set the envi‐
137 ronment variable "http_proxy". Snownews expects this variable to be in
138 the format http://your_proxy.org:PORT/
139 (http://proxy.your_isp.com:8080/).
140 Plugins
142 Snownews has a plugin architecture that allows to load feeds from ex‐
144 ternal scripts or pipe downloaded contents through a filter. Such a
145 filter could be an Atom to RSS converter for example. The snownews web‐
146 site has a section with publically available extensions. See
147 http://snownews.kcore.de/snowscripts/.
148 There are two types of filters: execurls and filters.
150 Execurls are scripts that produce a valid RSS file by themselves. You
152 can add such extensions by subscribing to a feed "exec:/path/to/exten‐
153 sion".
154 Filters convert a downloaded resource on the fly. You usually subscribe
156 to an URL that is a webpage or a non-RSS feed. If snownews asks you if
157 you want to use a filter, because it couldn't parse the resource, enter
158 the location of your script. You can also add filters to exisiting sub‐
159 scriptions by highlighting the feed and pressing 'e' in the main menu.
160 For further documentation about this feature, please visit the website
162 http://snownews.kcore.de/snowscripts/.
163 Snownews is released under the GNU General Public License version 3.
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167 --charset or -l, Force using this charset. Snownews tries to guess the
168 correct charset of your terminal, but if fails, this option can be used
169 to force using a specific one.
170 --cursor-on or -c, Always display the cursor on the screen.
172 --update or -u, Automatically update all subscribed feeds when the ap‐
174 plication starts.
175 --help or -h, Show usage summary and available command line options and
177 exit.
178 --version or -V, Print program version and exit.
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182 http_proxy
183 Snownews will access the internet through the proxy server set
184 in this variable. The expected format is
185 http://your_proxy.org:PORT/.
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188 Reporting bugs
189 If you think you found a bug in Snownews, please report it. Anything
191 that makes the program crash, regardless what you're doing is a bug and
192 needs to be fixed. XML parsing errors are probably not fixable in
193 Snownews since libxml is responsible for parsing a document's XML.
194 Though you can report problematic feeds anyway, it may be a bug in
195 Snownews.
196
199 Oliver Feiler <kiza@kcore.de>
200Programs 22 October 2004 SNOWNEWS(1)