I've made a minor bump to OldNews, my terminal-based client for TheOldReader. There's no significant change in this release, but it does change the dependency on html-to-markdown.
Since I initially released the application, this library seems to have been through a couple of significant changes, and not every breaking change seems to have resulted in a major version bump. OldNews doesn't pin this dependency to a major version (I try not to, only ever setting lower-bounds for dependencies where possible), so it's fair that a change there can break things. I also think it's fair to hope that minor version changes won't cause trouble.
Recently, I've seen the library update with a minor version change and it's flat-out caused runtime errors, either because the API has changed, or because of an error being thrown by legitimate use of the API.
Most recently, such an error happened, and was fixed by the time I noticed it, but the release that was made never made it up to PyPI. This left OldNews stuck not working. Because of this I had to pin the library to an earlier version.
It's now been updated again and PyPI is correct, so I think it's safe to relax the pin.
Yesterday evening I released v1.4.0 of OldNews, my terminal-based client for TheOldReader.
The change in this release is pretty straightforward, but something I kept finding myself wanting. I've added three new commands to the application:
JumpToSubscriptions - Jump to the subscriptions panel
JumpToArticles - Jump to the articles panel
JumpToArticle - Jump to the article panel
By default they're bound to 1, 2 and 3. So now skipping around the UI and navigating to a different article or blog is just a bit quicker.
If you're a user of TheOldReader and fancy interacting with it from the terminal: OldNews is licensed GPL-3.0 and available via GitHub and also via PyPI. It can also be installed using uv:
uvtoolinstalloldnews
If you don't have uv installed you can use uvx.sh to perform the installation. For GNU/Linux or macOS or similar:
Yesterday evening I released v1.3.0 of OldNews, my terminal-based client for TheOldReader.
The main reason for this release is that html_to_markdown had a major release and the one function I use from it fundamentally changed the return type, causing OldNews to crash any time you tried to read an article.
It was a quick enough fix, although it's one I want to go back and review and perhaps see if there's a better approach, or see if this new return type offers something I could be making better use of.
The one other change, which I made a wee while ago but hadn't got round to releasing yet (I've been kind of distracted recently), is that OldNews now only makes a call out to the API to mark an article as read when you read it, but only if it was previously unread. A small internal change nobody should really notice, but it saves on work.
If you're a user of TheOldReader and fancy interacting with it from the terminal too then it's out there to try out. It's licensed GPL-3.0 and available via GitHub and also via PyPI. If you have an environment that has pipx installed you should be able to get up and running with:
I honestly can't remember when I was first introduced to the idea of RSS/Atom feeds, and the idea of having an aggregator or reader of some description to keep up with updates on your favourite sites. It's got to be over 25 years ago now. I can't remember what I used either, but I remember using one or two readers that ran locally, right up until I met Google Reader. Once I discovered that I was settled.
As time moved on and I moved from platform to platform, and wandered into the smartphone era, I stuck with Google Reader (and the odd client for it here and there). It was a natural and sensible approach to consuming news and updates. It also mostly felt like a solved problem and so felt nice and stable.
When this happened I dabbled with a couple of alternatives and, at some point, finally settled on TheOldReader. Since then it's been my "server" for feed subscriptions with me using desktop and mobile clients to work against it.
I've written it as a client application for the API of TheOldReader, and only for that, and have developed it in a way that works well for me. All the functionality I want and need is in there:
Add subscriptions
Rename subscriptions
Remove subscriptions
Add folders
Rename folders
Remove folders
Move subscriptions between folders
Mark read/unread
Read articles (that provide actual content in their feeds)
Currently there's no support for starring feeds or interacting with the whole "friend" system (honestly: while I see mention of it in the API, I know nothing of that side of things and really don't care about it). As time goes on I might work on that.
As with all of my other terminal-based applications, there's a rich command palette that shows you what you can do, and also what keyboard shortcuts will run those commands. While I do still need to work on some documentation for the application (although you'd hope that anyone looking for an RSS reader at this point would mostly be able to find their way around) the palette is a good place to go looking for things you can do.
Plus there's a help screen too.
If themes are your thing, there's themes:
That's a small selection, and there's more to explore.
Also on the cosmetic front there's a simple compact mode, which toggles between two ways of showing the navigation menu, the article lists and the panel headers.
OldNews has been a daily-driver for a wee while now, while also under active development. I think I've covered all the main functions I want and have also shaken out plenty of bugs, so today's the day to call it v1.0.0 and go from there.
If you're a user of TheOldReader and fancy interacting with it from the terminal too then it's out there to try out. It's licensed GPL-3.0 and available via GitHub and also via PyPI. If you have an environment that has pipx installed you should be able to get up and running with:
Hopefully this is useful to someone else; meanwhile I'll be using it more and more. If you need help, or have any ideas, please feel free to raise an issue or start a discussion.
