Snownews

What it is

Snownews is a command-line RSS feed reader. It is designed to be simple and lightweight, and integrates well with other command-line tools, for both generating and filtering the feeds it reads. Snownews runs on almost anything Unix (and will even build with Cygwin).

Features

• Runs on Linux, BSD, OS X (Darwin), Solaris and probably many more Unices. Yes, even works under Cygwin.
• Fast and very resource friendly.
• Builtin HTTP client will follow server redirects and update feed URLs that point to permanent redirects (301) automatically.
• Understands "Not-Modified" (304) server replies and handles gzip compression.
• Uses local cache for minimal network traffic.
• Supports HTTP proxy.
• Supports HTTP authentication (basic and digest methods).
• Supports cookies.
• A help menu available throughout the program.
• Automatic update checking (can be deactivated).
• Few dependencies on external libraries; ncurses and libxml2.
• Import feature for OPML subscription lists.
• Fully customizable key bindings of all program functions.
• Type Ahead Find for quick and easy navigation.
• Color support.
• Extensible via plugins.
• Feed categories and many other useful features!

Building Snownews

You will need the following:

• GCC compiler 5+
• ncurses 5.0+
• libxml2
• openssl 1.1+
• Perl (any recent version will do)
• gettext (lib and msgfmt tool)

Simply do the following steps:

./configure
make
sudo make install

By default, this will install Snownews into /usr/local. If you prefer it to go somewhere else, set the ./configure --prefix=DIR parameter. configure --help will list other options that you may find interesting. For example, if you're on Arch, you would do:

./configure --prefix=/usr
sudo make install

How to use it

Snownews comes with a complete man page, where you can find all the details for its use. If you prefer a tutorial, you can find one here. The man page is available in English, German, Dutch and French at the moment.

A set of helper scripts, made for Snownews by various contributors, can be found in the contrib directory, along with instructions for their use.

Contributing

If you would like to contribute to Snownews, consider fixing one of our issues, adding a helper script, or writing a localization. If you are interested in contributing a helper script, please read contrib/CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

Localization

Snownews and its documentation is currently available in the following languages:

• Belarusian Latin
• Chinese, Traditional
• Chinese, Simplified
• Dutch
• English
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Polish
• Portuguese, Brazilian
• Russian
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Swedish

If you want to create a new translation or update an exisiting one, send a patch or a pull request on github.

License

Snownews is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3 only (SPDX code GPL-3.0). For more details, as well as the text of the license, please see the COPYING file.