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| The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to reinob For This Useful Post: | ||
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2014-08-08
, 15:56
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Posts: 1,974 |
Thanked: 1,834 times |
Joined on Mar 2013
@ india
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#62
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Originally Posted by reinob
oops thats awsome i didnt knew there are things like this it will be definately awsome to have a native client maybe a seperate pasta or plugin
@Copernicus,
I haven't tried Linguine because podcasts are not interesting to me.. but if you could implement a RSS reader that keeps synchronized with online RSS readers (*cough* theoldreader.com *cough*) I would be really happy.
The standard RSS reader (and most of the RSS readers) manage everything on their own, but I prefer having a central place (previously google reader, for some time now theoldreader), so that there's no need to synchronize anything, and which I then read from home, office or train. The latter involves the N900 and an ugly hack: I ssh into a server of mine in which I run a cursed-curses-programcalled newsbeuter with which I read my feeds directly off theoldreader. A more "graphical" and "native" tool would be a blessing.
now a spare n900 can really become awsome bedside device
btw the webapps are also good
http://www.inboxn.com/
http://updatified.com/
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2014-08-09
, 16:08
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Posts: 6,346 |
Thanked: 20,674 times |
Joined on Sep 2012
@ UK
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#63
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I just installed Linguine for the first time. I am not big on reading or watching news: I haven't bought a newspaper for over 15 years and I usually rather read TMO, take a bath or go to sleep early than watch the news on the TV. In other words, I do not have much need for a similar application and I installed it just out of curiosity, knowing the quality provided by Mr Copernicus and having read this thread.
So I may be speaking out of the wrong hole, as I do not have much experience with any news aggregators. Please take this into account when considering the following feedback.
First, I'd like to say that I really like this application. It suits my minimal needs wonderfully. Having successfully passed the trial, I am actually considering keeping it and even using it from time to time. However, there are a few things I would like to suggest that might help light users like me.
1. I would really appreciate a filter for just selected news feeds. For example, only BBC. I guess this would be even more useful for other countries' nationals, to filter e.g. only French channels etc.
2. It would be preferable to display the news channel name in the list (e.g in Text News or Comics) rather than the headline. Or display both, with the channel name first. There is the channel icon but that is so small as to be barely discernable.
3. Follow-up to #2. If displaying both the name and the headline, then sort by the channel name, not the headline. Or make the sorting configuable. It is annoying when e.g. the BBC news suddenly move to the end of the list because the headline starts with "The ...".
4. It would be nice to have a "do not show pictures" option available for Text News.
5. It would be nice to save the settings on exit, including the current selected tab.
That's it. Sorry if some of the above has already been suggested and answered. I have followed this thread but probably only as intently as I follow the news and I may have missed something. Or even a lot
So I may be speaking out of the wrong hole, as I do not have much experience with any news aggregators. Please take this into account when considering the following feedback.
First, I'd like to say that I really like this application. It suits my minimal needs wonderfully. Having successfully passed the trial, I am actually considering keeping it and even using it from time to time. However, there are a few things I would like to suggest that might help light users like me.
1. I would really appreciate a filter for just selected news feeds. For example, only BBC. I guess this would be even more useful for other countries' nationals, to filter e.g. only French channels etc.
2. It would be preferable to display the news channel name in the list (e.g in Text News or Comics) rather than the headline. Or display both, with the channel name first. There is the channel icon but that is so small as to be barely discernable.
3. Follow-up to #2. If displaying both the name and the headline, then sort by the channel name, not the headline. Or make the sorting configuable. It is annoying when e.g. the BBC news suddenly move to the end of the list because the headline starts with "The ...".
4. It would be nice to have a "do not show pictures" option available for Text News.
5. It would be nice to save the settings on exit, including the current selected tab.
That's it. Sorry if some of the above has already been suggested and answered. I have followed this thread but probably only as intently as I follow the news and I may have missed something. Or even a lot
| The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to pichlo For This Useful Post: | ||
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2014-08-09
, 18:04
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Posts: 1,986 |
Thanked: 7,697 times |
Joined on Dec 2010
@ Dayton, Ohio
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#64
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Well, I've been looking in to The Old Reader a bit, and they do have a fairly nice little API set up for their service. I'm not sure how much work it would take to start using it, but it would provide a pretty easy way to incorporate more standard RSS reader features into Linguine without having to implement a lot of local caching. (Although I guess I probably will do that eventually, as that seems to be where this app is headed...) Anyway, if I can get TOR up and running, I think it wouldn't be too hard to add Facebook as well... We'll see.
Also:
So yeah, you can expect a lot of messiness in this app as I try to figure things out...
Definitely, this is something I'm trying to implement. (In fact, this is what the "collection" is supposed to provide, in the XML newsfeeds file.) I need to get a graphical UI built to support this.
I should say, after looking at a handful of feed readers, they seem to do things in the opposite manner: rather than offering a selection of feeds right off, they all seem to start of with giving you a blank page, and ask you to manually subscribe to feeds yourself. This may be a better way of going about things...
Yeah, I've been fighting with this for a bit now. The problem comes down to my use of the Qt "QListWidget" class. QListWidget provides a surprisingly powerful and economical mechanism for displaying a large list of data, but it has some significant limitations. In particular, there is almost no formatting available for the text of a list item. I've been trying a number of different ways to cram the name, headline, and timestamp into each list item, but it just never seems to come out in a readable fashion. I've ended up just leaving the headline in, as that seems the most important information. I've also tried sorting by name or by timestamp even without showing them in the text, but that ends up with a list looking just as chaotic as it does now.
I've pretty much determined that the QListWidget isn't going to serve my purposes here. Things should get better once I find a UI mechanism that has more flexibility...
Yes! That's easy enough to do, let me give it a shot...
Also should be easy, although I've just been messing with the UI a bit, so it'll probably look a bit different in the next release...
Also:
Originally Posted by pichlo
Honestly, neither do I.
I do not have much experience with any news aggregators.
So yeah, you can expect a lot of messiness in this app as I try to figure things out...1. I would really appreciate a filter for just selected news feeds. For example, only BBC. I guess this would be even more useful for other countries' nationals, to filter e.g. only French channels etc.
I should say, after looking at a handful of feed readers, they seem to do things in the opposite manner: rather than offering a selection of feeds right off, they all seem to start of with giving you a blank page, and ask you to manually subscribe to feeds yourself. This may be a better way of going about things...
2. It would be preferable to display the news channel name in the list (e.g in Text News or Comics) rather than the headline. Or display both, with the channel name first. There is the channel icon but that is so small as to be barely discernable.
3. Follow-up to #2. If displaying both the name and the headline, then sort by the channel name, not the headline. Or make the sorting configuable. It is annoying when e.g. the BBC news suddenly move to the end of the list because the headline starts with "The ...".
I've pretty much determined that the QListWidget isn't going to serve my purposes here. Things should get better once I find a UI mechanism that has more flexibility...
4. It would be nice to have a "do not show pictures" option available for Text News.
5. It would be nice to save the settings on exit, including the current selected tab.
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2014-08-09
, 18:26
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Posts: 6,346 |
Thanked: 20,674 times |
Joined on Sep 2012
@ UK
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#65
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Originally Posted by Copernicus
To be honest, that is what I was expecting to see the first time I started Linguine. And I had never seen any other news reader in action before
I should say, after looking at a handful of feed readers, they seem to do things in the opposite manner: rather than offering a selection of feeds right off, they all seem to start of with giving you a blank page, and ask you to manually subscribe to feeds yourself. This may be a better way of going about things...
The problem comes down to my use of the Qt "QListWidget" class. QListWidget provides a surprisingly powerful and economical mechanism for displaying a large list of data, but it has some significant limitations. In particular, there is almost no formatting available for the text of a list item.
I've pretty much determined that the QListWidget isn't going to serve my purposes here. Things should get better once I find a UI mechanism that has more flexibility...
) and must say that I found the QListWidget/QListView model a bit confusing at first, but I think I got the hang of it in the end.QListWidget is very powerful and flexible, but you have to do a lot of work yourself to make use of that flexibility. QListView is a convenience class derived from QListWidget that does some things for you and hides most of the complexity, but also limits the flexibility.
I found that getting some inspiration from existing applications worked the best for me. Take for example the sources of Hamster Filer and look how it is done there. Look specifically for the "delegate" classes as that is how it works: each QListWidget entry uses a delegate to draw itself. You have pretty much a free hand what to do and how.
| The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to pichlo For This Useful Post: | ||
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2014-08-09
, 18:54
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Posts: 2,448 |
Thanked: 9,523 times |
Joined on Aug 2010
@ Wigan, UK
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#66
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Originally Posted by Copernicus
I would honestly recommend switching to the model/view approach, even if you just stick with the default item delegate. You will need to do that in future anyway, if you ever want to use QML for the UI (say, for Harmattan or Sailfish). It also allows you to share the same data between multiple item views.
Yeah, I've been fighting with this for a bit now. The problem comes down to my use of the Qt "QListWidget" class. QListWidget provides a surprisingly powerful and economical mechanism for displaying a large list of data, but it has some significant limitations. In particular, there is almost no formatting available for the text of a list item. I've been trying a number of different ways to cram the name, headline, and timestamp into each list item, but it just never seems to come out in a readable fashion. I've ended up just leaving the headline in, as that seems the most important information. I've also tried sorting by name or by timestamp even without showing them in the text, but that ends up with a list looking just as chaotic as it does now.
I've pretty much determined that the QListWidget isn't going to serve my purposes here. Things should get better once I find a UI mechanism that has more flexibility...
__________________
'Men of high position are allowed, by a special act of grace, to accomodate their reasoning to the answer they need. Logic is only required in those of lesser rank.' - J K Galbraith
My website
GitHub
'Men of high position are allowed, by a special act of grace, to accomodate their reasoning to the answer they need. Logic is only required in those of lesser rank.' - J K Galbraith
My website
GitHub
| The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to marxian For This Useful Post: | ||
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2014-08-09
, 19:38
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Posts: 1,986 |
Thanked: 7,697 times |
Joined on Dec 2010
@ Dayton, Ohio
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#67
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Originally Posted by pichlo
Ah, well, I did see some examples using the "delegate" system, but they all seem to involve using "QPainter" to pretty much draw the entire region by hand, and I was kind of hoping to avoid doing that much work.
Look specifically for the "delegate" classes as that is how it works: each QListWidget entry uses a delegate to draw itself. You have pretty much a free hand what to do and how.
But yeah, that's probably the direction I'll have to go.
| The Following User Says Thank You to Copernicus For This Useful Post: | ||
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2014-08-09
, 19:43
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Posts: 6,346 |
Thanked: 20,674 times |
Joined on Sep 2012
@ UK
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#68
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Yes, it does look scary at first but you will soon find that it is actually not that bad.
| The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to pichlo For This Useful Post: | ||
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2014-08-09
, 19:53
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Posts: 1,986 |
Thanked: 7,697 times |
Joined on Dec 2010
@ Dayton, Ohio
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#69
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Originally Posted by marxian
Ah, well, I've been trying to avoid QML as much as possible for now. I'm not really that much of a GUI guy, and I've already put a lot of time and effort into figuring out the good old Qt Widgets system.
I would honestly recommend switching to the model/view approach, even if you just stick with the default item delegate. You will need to do that in future anyway, if you ever want to use QML for the UI (say, for Harmattan or Sailfish). It also allows you to share the same data between multiple item views.
I've also got to admit, I've found the decisions made in the design and deployment of QML to be kind of annoying. While it may provide more flexibility and freedom than Qt Widgets, it (a) lacks much of the functionality of Qt Widgets, (b) seems to be targeted mainly towards handheld devices rather than desktop machines, and (c) does not seem to have any official interest in being back-ported to older devices (i.e., the n900), despite the fine efforts folks in this forum have been making to set it up here.
By sticking purely to Qt Widgets, I can more easily port my apps to more platforms (including the n900 and my Mac) with less work. Oddly enough, this even includes Android, where Qt Widgets can adapt to Android styling preferences (something not yet supported under QML, from what I've seen).
I'm hoping the Qt Controls effort will bridge this gap; if I can dump the whole set of some 200+ Pierogi buttons into Qt Controls without driving myself mad, I think I'll be able to convert to QML more easily.
| The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to Copernicus For This Useful Post: | ||
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2014-08-14
, 02:02
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Posts: 1,986 |
Thanked: 7,697 times |
Joined on Dec 2010
@ Dayton, Ohio
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#70
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Linguine version 0.3.0 is now moving into extras-devel; with this release, it takes a tentative step forward into the world of RSS readers. The big feature this time is (limited) support for reading newsfeeds directly off of "The Old Reader" (link: http://theoldreader.com). When I say limited, I do mean limited; you'll need to already have a The Old Reader account, and Linguine currently can't do more than read entries in from each newsfeed source. (So no creating / modifying / deleting of folders, or subscribing / unsubscribing from feeds.) Nor does it mark entries as read when you read them. (Hopefully, I'll get some of these items added in the near future.) Also, only the top 20 items in each feed are displayed; more work to come there as well.
One of the more interesting features of The Old Reader is that users can create "folders" of newsfeeds; TOR will then treat these folders as synthetic newsfeeds, and combine all the entries in each folder into a single display. So, Linguine is using a "tree view" to display TOR newsfeeds; you can navigate down the tree to select individual sources and display them, but you can also click on the folders themselves to display entries from all the child feeds combined.
I've also got to give a shout out to Marmistrz for uploading the QJson library. QJson makes parsing JSON data (such as the data provided by TOR) in Qt just criminally easy.
In other news, I've added a new checkbox in the preferences panel that will allow you to suppress images when displaying newsfeed data. Also, I tried to get RSS data from Facebook, but it appears that they have completely shut down all their RSS feeds; they apparently now require you to retrieve data through their html interface. (I'm really not a Facebook user, so I can't say for certain that I'm not missing something here...)
The first time you run this version of Linguine, it will ask if you want to use the "native" Linguine newsfeeds, or the TOR newsfeeds. After that, it should start up with your preferred newsfeed source. You can go back to the feed choice screen by selecting "Select New Source" from the drop-down menu.
In any case, Linguine is probably not yet useful as a general news reader, but it is starting to take a few steps in that direction. I'll continue to work on it as I have time...
One of the more interesting features of The Old Reader is that users can create "folders" of newsfeeds; TOR will then treat these folders as synthetic newsfeeds, and combine all the entries in each folder into a single display. So, Linguine is using a "tree view" to display TOR newsfeeds; you can navigate down the tree to select individual sources and display them, but you can also click on the folders themselves to display entries from all the child feeds combined.
I've also got to give a shout out to Marmistrz for uploading the QJson library. QJson makes parsing JSON data (such as the data provided by TOR) in Qt just criminally easy.
In other news, I've added a new checkbox in the preferences panel that will allow you to suppress images when displaying newsfeed data. Also, I tried to get RSS data from Facebook, but it appears that they have completely shut down all their RSS feeds; they apparently now require you to retrieve data through their html interface. (I'm really not a Facebook user, so I can't say for certain that I'm not missing something here...)
The first time you run this version of Linguine, it will ask if you want to use the "native" Linguine newsfeeds, or the TOR newsfeeds. After that, it should start up with your preferred newsfeed source. You can go back to the feed choice screen by selecting "Select New Source" from the drop-down menu.
In any case, Linguine is probably not yet useful as a general news reader, but it is starting to take a few steps in that direction. I'll continue to work on it as I have time...
| The Following 9 Users Say Thank You to Copernicus For This Useful Post: | ||
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I haven't tried Linguine because podcasts are not interesting to me.. but if you could implement a RSS reader that keeps synchronized with online RSS readers (*cough* theoldreader.com *cough*) I would be really happy.
The standard RSS reader (and most of the RSS readers) manage everything on their own, but I prefer having a central place (previously google reader, for some time now theoldreader), so that there's no need to synchronize anything, and which I then read from home, office or train. The latter involves the N900 and an ugly hack: I ssh into a server of mine in which I run a cursed-curses-program