snownews/man/snownews.1

.\" Snownews manpage
.\"
.\" This manpage is copyrighted by Oliver Feiler 2003
.\"                                <kiza@kcore.de>
.\"
.TH SNOWNEWS 1 "22 October 2004" Programs "Snownews"
.SH NAME
.B snownews
\- console RSS newsreader
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B snownews [-huV] [--help|--update|--version]
.SH DESCRIPTION
Snownews is a console RSS/RDF news reader. It supports all versions of RSS
natively and can be expanded via plugins to support many other other formats.
.P
The main program screen, that is shown right after you start snownews,
lets you add/remove feeds and update them manually. On the right side of
the screen the number of new items is shown for every newsfeed. To add
a feed press
.B 'a'
and enter the URL. This can be either a http:// or a feed:// URL. If you
omit the protocol specifier snownews asumes the HTTP protocol.
To delete a listed feed highlight it with the
cursor keys and press
.B 'D'.
A dialog will ask for confirmation.
.P
You can navigate through the main menu with up and down arrow keys or with
.B 'n'
and
.B 'p'.
The keys
.B page up/page down, b/space
and
.B HOME/END, </>
will scroll a page up or down and to the first or last entry respectively.
Pressing
.B 'r'
reloads the highlighted feed from the server,
.B 'R'
updates all feeds in your list and
.B 'T'
refreshes the feed ignoring any cache control data. That means, even if the
feed has not been modified on the server, Snownews will still download the file.
.P
The program will not sort this list alphabetically by default. You can move items
up and down by pressing
.B 'P'
and
.B 'N'.
To sort the feed list alphabetically, press
.B 's'.
.P
If you highlight a feed and hit Enter the program will display every
item for this feed. Navigation in all sub menus works as usual. If you press
.B 'r'
the program will reload the current feed. Items may vanish from the list
completely and new newsitems will appear bold or in colour.
.P
Select an item and hit Enter to read its description. If there is none
attached to it the text "No description available." will be displayed
instead. You can use the arrow keys left and right, repectively
.B 'p'
and
.B 'n'
to select the previous or next newsitem in the list. Pressing
.B 'o'
will open the link (usually the complete news text) in the browser.
.P
The default browser is lynx, but you can change this by pressing
.B 'B'
in the main menu and entering a new default browser. Or you can edit
the file ~/.config/snownews/browser. The program replaces
%s with the URL when expanding the string.
.P
You can rename a feed by pressing the key
.B 'c'
and entering its new name. To reset its name to the original title enter '-'
in this textfield.
.P
A context help window is available everytime by pressing
.B 'h'.
.P
.B Type Ahead Find
.P
For faster navigation in your feedlist you can use Snownews' Type Ahead
Find feature. Press the TAB key and the statusline will change into a
text entry field. While you enter the text you want to search for, highlight
will be automatically placed on items as they match. If you have selected an
item just press enter to open the feed. If there are multiple items
matching you can switch between them by pressing TAB. To quit Type Ahead
delete the search text or press CTRL+G
.P
.B Categories
.P
Snownews uses categories to manage large subscription lists. You can define
as many categories for a feed as you like. You can then apply a filter in the
main menu that will only show feeds that have a matching category defined.
Feeds with a category will have it printed next to their name in the main menu.
.P
To add or remove a feed from a category, press
.B 'C'
while the feed is highlighted in the main menu. If you already have defined
categories for other feeds you'll get a list of the existing categories.
Just press its number to add the current feed to this category. To add the
feed to a new category, press
.B 'A'
and enter the name of the new category. If you want to remove a feed from
a category, just press its number in the feed categorization GUI.
.P
You can see all defined categories for a feed in the feed info.
.P
.B Customizing keybindings
.P
You can customize the keybindings by editing the file ~/.config/snownews/keybindings.
The format is "function description:key". Do not change the string
"function description". The single character behind the colon represents
the key the program will associate with the corresponding function. If
you delete a definition or the program cannot parse the file for some reason
the default settings will be used instead.
.P
.B Colours
.P
If you prefer to see the world in colours you can enable (and configure) colour
support in Snownews. Edit the file ~/.config/snownews/colors. To globally enable
colours in the program, set enabled to "1". To set a colour, use the colour
key value that is listed in the comment in that file. You can disable usage
for single items by using the value "-1".
.P
.B HTTP client features
.P
Snownews' HTTP client will follow HTTP server redirects. If the URL you have
entered points to a permanent redirect it will update the internal URL
to reflect the new location. Requests will be automatically sent to the
new location from now on.
.P
Snownews supports
.B HTTP authentication
and
.B Cookies.
To subscribe to a feed that requires authentication, use an URL
.B http://username:password@server/feed.rss.
You can use cookies to supply log in information to a webserver. Put the
cookies you want Snownews to use into the file
.B ~/.config/snownews/cookies.
The file has to be in standard Netscape cookies.txt file format. Mozilla uses
this format for example. Snownews will automatically send the right cookies
to the right webserver. You can also just place a symlink to your browser's
cookie file, but it is not recommended. If a cookie is expired, Snownews will
print a warning on program start and not use the cookie. If a cookie is
marked as secure (only to be used via an SSL secured connection) Snownews will
also discard the cookie.
.P
If you need to use a
.B proxy server
to access the internet, set the environment
variable "http_proxy". Snownews expects this variable to be in the format
.I http://your_proxy.org:PORT/
(http://proxy.your_isp.com:8080/).
.P
.B Plugins
.P
Snownews has a plugin architecture that allows to load feeds from external
scripts or pipe downloaded contents through a filter. There are two types:
.B execurls
and
.B filters.
.P
Execurls are scripts that produce a valid RSS file by themselves. You can add
such extensions by subscribing to a feed "exec:/path/to/extension".
.P
Filters convert a downloaded resource on the fly used when you subscribe to
a URL that is a webpage or a non-RSS feed. If snownews asks you if you want
to use a filter, because it couldn't parse the resource, enter the location
of your script. You can also add filters to exisiting subscriptions by
highlighting the feed and pressing
.B 'e'
in the main menu.
.P
.B Snownews is released under the GNU General Public License version 3.
.SH OPTIONS
.B \-\-charset or \-l,
Force using this charset. Snownews tries to guess the correct charset of your
terminal, but if fails, this option can be used to force using a specific one.
.P
.B \-\-cursor-on or \-c,
Always display the cursor on the screen.
.P
.B \-\-update or \-u,
Automatically update all subscribed feeds when the application starts.
.P
.B \-\-help or \-h,
Show usage summary and available command line options and exit.
.P
.B \-\-version or \-V,
Print program version and exit.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.TP
.B http_proxy
Snownews will access the internet through the proxy server set in this variable.
The expected format is http://your_proxy.org:PORT/.
.SH BUGS
.P
.B Reporting bugs
.P
If you think you found a bug in Snownews, please report it. Anything that makes
the program crash, regardless what you're doing is a bug and needs to be fixed.
XML parsing errors are probably not fixable in Snownews since libxml is responsible
for parsing a document's XML. Though you can report problematic feeds anyway,
it may be a bug in Snownews.

.SH AUTHOR
Oliver Feiler <kiza@kcore.de>