Homepage: https://www.nongnu.org/newsticker
Author: Ulf Jasper
A Newsticker for Emacs
Overview
--------
Newsticker provides a newsticker for Emacs. A newsticker is a thing
that asynchronously retrieves headlines from a list of news sites,
prepares these headlines for reading, and allows for loading the
corresponding articles in a web browser.
Headlines consist of a title and (possibly) a small description. They
are contained in "RSS" (RDF Site Summary) or "Atom" files. Newsticker
should work with the following RSS formats:
* RSS 0.91
(see http://backend.userland.com/rss091)
* RSS 0.92
(see http://backend.userland.com/rss092)
* RSS 1.0
(see https://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/spec)
* RSS 2.0
(see https://cyber.harvard.edu/rss/)
as well as the following Atom formats:
* Atom 0.3
* Atom 1.0
(see https://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-format-11.txt)
That makes Newsticker.el an "Atom aggregator, "RSS reader", "RSS
aggregator", and "Feed Reader".
Newsticker provides several commands for reading headlines, navigating
through them, marking them as read/unread, hiding old headlines
etc. Headlines can be displayed as plain text or as rendered HTML.
Headlines can be displayed in the echo area, either scrolling like
messages in a stock-quote ticker, or just changing.
Newsticker allows for automatic processing of headlines by providing
hooks and (sample) functions for automatically downloading images and
enclosed files (as delivered by podcasts, e.g.).
Requirements
------------
Newsticker requires a program which can retrieve files via http and
prints them to stdout. By default Newsticker will use wget for this
task.
Installation
------------
If you are using `imenu', which allows for navigating with the help of a
menu, you should add the following to your Emacs startup file
(`~/.emacs').
(add-hook 'newsticker-mode-hook 'imenu-add-menubar-index)
That's it.
Usage
-----
The command newsticker-show-news will display all available headlines in
a special buffer, called `*newsticker*'. It will also start the
asynchronous download of headlines. The mode line in the `*newsticker*'
buffer informs whenever new headlines have arrived. Clicking
mouse-button 2 or pressing RET in this buffer on a headline will call
browse-url to load the corresponding news story in your favorite web
browser.
The scrolling, or flashing of headlines in the echo area, can be started
with the command newsticker-start-ticker. It can be stopped with
newsticker-stop-ticker.
If you just want to start the periodic download of headlines use the
command newsticker-start. Calling newsticker-stop will stop the
periodic download, but will call newsticker-stop-ticker as well.
Configuration
-------------
All Newsticker options are customizable, i.e. they can be changed with
Emacs customization methods: Call the command customize-group and enter
`newsticker' for the customization group.
All Newsticker options have reasonable default values, so that in most
cases it is not necessary to customize settings before starting
Newsticker for the first time.
Newsticker options are organized in the following groups.
* newsticker-feed contains options that define which news
feeds are retrieved and how this is done.
o newsticker-url-list defines the list of headlines which are
retrieved.
o newsticker-retrieval-interval defines how often headlines are
retrieved.
* newsticker-headline-processing contains options that define how the
retrieved headlines are processed.
o newsticker-keep-obsolete-items decides whether unread headlines that
have been removed from the feed are kept in the Newsticker cache.
* newsticker-layout contains options that define how the buffer for
reading news headlines is formatted.
o newsticker-item-format defines how the title of a headline is
formatted.
* newsticker-ticker contains options that define how headlines are shown
in the echo area.
o newsticker-display-interval and newsticker-scroll-smoothly define
how headlines are shown in the echo area.
* newsticker-hooks contains options for hooking other Emacs commands to
newsticker functions.
o newsticker-new-item-functions allows for automatic processing of
headlines. See `newsticker-download-images', and
`newsticker-download-enclosures' for sample functions.
* newsticker-miscellaneous contains other Newsticker options.
Please have a look at the customization buffers for the complete list of
options.
Remarks
-------
This newsticker is designed do its job silently in the background
without disturbing you. However, it is probably impossible to prevent
such a tool from slightly attenuating your Editor's responsiveness every
once in a while.
Byte-compiling newsticker.el is recommended.
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