Arch Linux

andre.ramaciotti

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2007-04-06

Posts: 649

Quest for *THE* feed reader

If there's something with which I can never get satisfied, it's surely RSS readers/aggregators/whatever. We can divided them in two big groups:

Web-based: These are the ones like Google Reader or Bloglines. They run (or at least they should) 24/7, so they don't have a problem I'll describe in the Desktop-based readers, but they feel slow. It may be that they're not really slower than their local conterparts, but they do feel slower.

Desktop-based: Ah!, nothing beats the speed of running apps locally. But in my case, I don't have a RSS Reader running 24/7, so let me use our beloved xkcd feed to explain the problem:

Xkcd's feed shows only the last 4 entries. If I've stayed at home, I would receive 6 entries in a two-week period, but let's say I traveled for these two weeks. When I come back and turn on my RSS reader, I'll only have 4 entries. This is a problem that I guess it doesn't happen with Web-based readers (I may be wrong, though, it's been a long time since I used them).

We can narrow the problem a little more if we divide the Desktop-based feeders in two categories:
- text/ncurses based: lightweight, but lacks some functionality (e.g. snownwes)
- graphical: very good feature-wise, but are bigger (e.g. liferea).

So... any thoughts about this? An online service that would store the feeds for you 24/7 and then you could retrive them with a local app would be interesting, something that would be to feeds as IMAP is to mails. Is there such a thing?

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(lambda ())

puurokattila

Member

From: Finland

Registered: 2008-11-19

Posts: 14

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

I had problems with finding right feed reader for me. For a long time I used liferea but wasnt happy with it, then I found out about Brief addon for firefox and I love it.

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Netbook Eee 901, 2GB, Intel 4965AGN, touchscreen - Arch linux
Desktop - Ubuntu 9.10

SamC

Member

From: Calgary

Registered: 2008-05-13

Posts: 611

Website

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

Newsbeuter, a console-based feedreader, can use your bloglines subscriptions. It keeps an archive of past posts, but you'd need to keep it running. It also has some more "exotic" dependencies - like stfl instead of ncurses.

dolby

Member

From: 1992

Registered: 2006-08-08

Posts: 1,581

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

i use google reader now. newsbeuter is what i used before but IMO snownews is better. with newsbeuter i had problems i never had with snownews. and it doesnt have some features i would like, such as 256 colored terminals support.

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There shouldn't be any reason to learn more editor types than emacs or vi -- mg (1)
[You learn that sarcasm does not often work well in international forums.  That is why we avoid it. -- ewaller (arch linux forum moderator)

N30N

Member

Registered: 2007-04-08

Posts: 273

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

Have you guys tried out Canto? It's maturing nicely, is very customizable and has reasonable dependencies.

So... any thoughts about this?

Maybe you could use the lighter mobile Google reader or ReadAir.

buttons

Member

From: NJ, USA

Registered: 2007-08-04

Posts: 620

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

Google Reader.

I keep coming back to it.  And yes, being google, it saves all those old items indefinitely.  They got lots of space there.

I only wish there was a way to theme it (and don't say use stylish, because the greader team keep "improving" the site, which in turn breaks everything.)

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Cthulhu For President!

toxygen

Member

Registered: 2008-08-22

Posts: 713

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

i use akregator, but i'm on kdemod3, it does what i need it to do, and has a setting to always keep feeds.  plus i like being able to click and load the article in a separate tab on the same window

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"I know what you're thinking, 'cause right now I'm thinking the same thing. Actually, I've been thinking it ever since I got here:
Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill?"

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

At the moment I use NewsGator's synchronisation.

In the mornings I read the news on my windows mobile device in Egress. Sometimes on the train, other times over breakfast. It downloads in the morning so I don't need an always on connection either. It's all synchronised by NewsGator so I can also read the news on my desktop in the web interface or FeedDemon. No duplicates, and I don't miss any news, it just piles up in newsgator until it's marked read.

If you've got an always on machine, rawdog is kinda cool. Just generate the pages and have it upload them frequently with cron.

NewsGator has an API, but nobody's made a linux client that I know of, however the web client suits me fine. You can get similar synchronisation with bloglines.

James

Last edited by iphitus (2009-02-15 05:04:09)

onearm

Member

From: Anywhere but here

Registered: 2006-07-06

Posts: 359

Website

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

Google Reader here too.

Feed readers is another of those area where it seems there is no application that really does everything I need so no point in installing yet another one if I'm not clearly satisfied by it.

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To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.
--
My Github

Allan

Pacman

From: Brisbane, AU

Registered: 2007-06-09

Posts: 11,396

Website

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

Xkcd's feed shows only the last 4 entries. If I've stayed at home, I would receive 6 entries in a two-week period, but let's say I traveled for these two weeks. When I come back and turn on my RSS reader, I'll only have 4 entries. This is a problem that I guess it doesn't happen with Web-based readers (I may be wrong, though, it's been a long time since I used them).

I am quite concerned I have not noticed this which means Ihave not been out of internet reach for over a week in some time....

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PGP Key: F99FFE0FEAE999BD

andre.ramaciotti

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2007-04-06

Posts: 649

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

I'll take a look at this readers with syncronization support, thanks!

@Allan, well I used xkcd as example, I haven't been logged off that long, too
But there are news sites that update a lot more often, and maybe reading in the morning and at night is not "enough", I don't read what happened late in the morning.

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(lambda ())

uastasi

Member

From: Salento - Italy

Registered: 2007-11-27

Posts: 247

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

I'll take a look at this readers with syncronization support, thanks!

You could try liferea unstable as well. As explained in the changelog, a syncronization feature with google reader is (almost) working.

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Till the last battle, till the last bottle.
aur - twitter

Dieter@be

Forum Fellow

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-11-05

Posts: 2,001

Website

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

Ahh.. the rss reader.. the holy grail.
my wishes:
- under my control (eg no webservices)
- clean file formats (no gconf, preferrably no xml, just a simple config file)
- gtk but keyboard driven
- html support
- don't miss stuff.  (a cli-based program/script that can fetch in the background (eg daemon or crontab on a server), and a gtk program to display them would be ideal for me)
- good "i have already read this" tracking
- low dependencies.
- xdg basedir compliance
- no bloat, gconf or xulrunner (byebye liferea,blam)

I'm now using the rssyl plugin in claws-mail, but:
- html not always rendered correctly (though it uses webkit. not sure where the problem is)
- alt tags don't work (not good if you follow xkcd)
- only one "profile" possible. (i would like to have different config files, eg one with feeds for work, one for personal etc)

Last edited by Dieter@be (2009-02-15 16:44:59)

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< Daenyth> and he works prolifically
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andre.ramaciotti

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2007-04-06

Posts: 649

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

I've just seen that liferea has support for sync-ing with google reader, but read-only. It's good to know that full support is being developed. I'll check it out, thanks

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(lambda ())

dolby

Member

From: 1992

Registered: 2006-08-08

Posts: 1,581

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

Have you guys tried out Canto? It's maturing nicely, is very customizable and has reasonable dependencies.

I dont like the "popups" in canto. It looks like raggle, and i dint like raggle's interface either.

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There shouldn't be any reason to learn more editor types than emacs or vi -- mg (1)
[You learn that sarcasm does not often work well in international forums.  That is why we avoid it. -- ewaller (arch linux forum moderator)

Nezmer

Member

Registered: 2008-10-24

Posts: 559

Website

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

I tried to find a reader that assigns links to applications directly without opening the link in a browser first :
.torrent links > deluge
.mp3 links > XMMS
I need the reader to be lightweight without html support (If I needed html rendering , I would use opera or Brief in Firefox) . I didn't find a reader doing what I want .

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English is not my native language .

briest

Member

From: Katowice, PL

Registered: 2006-05-04

Posts: 468

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

I use JabRSS (short overview) -- a server-side solution for sending RSS to Jabber client. So, there is no problem with synchronization between few places (home, work, mobile, ...) - I get events right where I am at the moment and unread ones are queued on server (max queue length is server-specific).

Rasi

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-08-14

Posts: 1,914

Website

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

i love firefox' Brief extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4578)

Honestly, i have never used a feed reader that felt that natural before...

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He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

Douglas Adams

Vintendo

Member

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2008-04-21

Posts: 375

Website

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

I use canto and am quite statisfied with it. Simple, cli-based and customizable. It has a little program that fetches the feed wich you can put in you're crontab.

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www.vincentkriek.nl

TheMoken

Member

From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2008-02-23

Posts: 2

Website

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

Have you guys tried out Canto? It's maturing nicely, is very customizable and has reasonable dependencies.

I dont like the "popups" in canto. It looks like raggle, and i dint like raggle's interface either.

The latest releases (> 0.6.0) have the ability to dedicate space for the reader and do away with the other status pop-ups. I agree, they were annoying.

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Perpetually coding my balls off.

elmer_42

Member

From: /na/usa/ca

Registered: 2008-10-11

Posts: 427

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

Have you guys tried out Canto?

I have, it's pretty nice, but for the majority of the time I use Google Reader.

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[ lamy + pilot ] [ arch64 | wmii ] [ ati + amd ]

toxygen

Member

Registered: 2008-08-22

Posts: 713

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

i love firefox' Brief extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4578)

Honestly, i have never used a feed reader that felt that natural before...

wow, you are absolutely right, i'm loving this extension!  thanks!  ( i guess i should've checked it out earlier)

hands down the best one i've tried (and i tried most of the ones in the thread).  little did i know how much i was missing in plain old akregator.

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"I know what you're thinking, 'cause right now I'm thinking the same thing. Actually, I've been thinking it ever since I got here:
Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill?"

VirtualRider

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 134

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

Uhm..missing what - for example? I tried Brief for a short time but it felt not better than liferea.

andre.ramaciotti

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2007-04-06

Posts: 649

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

I'm using Google Reader now, but waiting for liferea 1.5 (1.5.8 is segfaulting at start here).

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(lambda ())

toxygen

Member

Registered: 2008-08-22

Posts: 713

Re: Quest for *THE* feed reader

Uhm..missing what - for example? I tried Brief for a short time but it felt not better than liferea.

if you've ever used akregator, you'd know what i was missing - mainly featurewise, but also in usabiilty.

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"I know what you're thinking, 'cause right now I'm thinking the same thing. Actually, I've been thinking it ever since I got here:
Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill?"