As an alternative to launching calibre, you can also retrieve News via the command line.
As a test I made the following batch file:
Code:
@Echo Off
setlocal
rem ======
rem Customization can be done here
rem news_file output name for the ebook to be written too; if you might be running multiple retrivals at the same time
rem ensure unique names are used
rem news_recipe Recipe being retrieved. This can either be the name of a built-in calibre recipe (ie "The Toronto Star.recipe")
rem or an actually recipe file. Custom recipes made by calibre are stored in the custom_recipes directory of the calibre preferences
rem for instance C:\Users\Peter\AppData\Roaming\calibre\custom_recipes\Pocket_1000.recipe
rem Remember, if either the recipe name or the custom recipe name contain spaces, enclose them in quotation marks
rem news_username if the recipe needs a userid specify it here
rem news_password if the recipe needs a password specify it here
set news_file=__thestar__.epub
set news_recipe="The Toronto Star.recipe"
set news_username=
set news_password=
rem If we need either a userid or password then add them to the command line
if not "%news_username%" == "" set news_userpwd=--username %news_username%
if not "%news_password%" == "" set news_userpwd=%news_userpwd% --password %news_password%
Rem Ensure we're in the Windows temp directory
cd /d %temp%
Rem remove the existing news we might have downloaded
if exist %news_file% del %news_file%
Rem retrieve the news feed
ebook-convert %news_recipe% %news_file% %news_userpwd%
if not exist %news_file% goto :eof
Rem add the retrieved news to calibre
calibredb add %news_file%
and set it as a task for Windows to run.
If you want to use a custom recipe for the news to retrieve, they are stored in the custom_recipes directory within the calibre preferences directory. In my case this would be
C:\Users\Peter\AppData\Roaming\calibre\custom_reci pes and have names like
Pocket_1000.recipe
I've included a range of variables to let you specify things like the output name, the recipe, and username / password