The Daily iLiadian

[Tommy]

Greetings,

I just updated my previous post, and uploaded a new version of getfeed: 0.9e

A nice weekend to all of you,
Tommy

[Tommy]

Hi there,

for those who are interested, I added two new features to getfeed and I thought some one might find it useful.

1. 1. It's now possible to also create an RSS feed out of the ones read by getfeed.pl.
   Dunno if this is worth anything at all... maybe you know....
   
2. If you're not interested in reading "yesterday's news", but only want to get what hasn't been gotten before, maybe the -D (or --delta) switch is something for you. With that switch the items of the current run are saved in a history file and subsequent runs will check its items against the content of the file, and only those items not previously saved will be shown in the output.

getfeed V0.10 (c) by T.Berndt
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRENTY.

usage: getfeed [...] [-o <outfile>] [-f] <feed> [<feed_1> ...]
  -f <feed>[;<start>;<stop>;<filter>;<server>;<srcURL>;<toURLa>;<toURLb>]
               : <feed> is a URL or a filenmae.
  -d <directory: store the feeds (and images) in <directory>
  -o <outfile> : saves output into <outfile>
  -t <title>   : Title of this news' edition
  -r           : Retrieve and append linked atricles. Default: no
  -R <file>    : Reads <file> instead of .getfeedrc
  -e <charset> : Use <charset> for encoding. Default: UTF-8
  -F <format>  : Output format: html(obvious), tex(LaTeX) or rss Default: html
  -S <style>   : Reads <style> and adds its content as style-information.
  -P <package> : Adds a \usepackage{<package>} into the LaTeX-file
  -C <cmd>     : Execute <cmd>
  -m           : format text in two columns
  -a           : Auto-name the output as news_YYYYMMDD.<format> Default: no
  -v           : Print debugging info to STDERR/<log>.
  -s           : Suppress all output. Default: no (i.e. not silent)
  -D           : Delta mode includes only new items since the last runt
  -l <log>     : Writes debugging information to <log>

So far for now.

Tommy

[rhari79]

Hi Tommy,

Thanks for this wonderful utility. I am now able to get one html with all news from back home. I usually use mobipocket to read the news and now also use getfeed.

One point i noticed: the urls in -f must be ; separated with a space after each entry.

my perl is almost non-existent...
Can i make a humble request?
In case the feeds list(-f url;url is huge the html generated is very big. Is it possible to break this up into multiple pages, like contents on 1st page, its associated news on separate pages?

This will help the html files to load on mobile/ereader devices more easily.

Thanks again for this wonderful tool.

hari

[Tommy]

Hi Hari,

Originally Posted by rhari79

[...]

One point i noticed: the urls in -f must be ; separated with a space after each entry.

Oops, I haven't been aware of this
I agree, and I think this required blank is nonsense... It should be quite easy to fix this.

In case the feeds list(-f url;url is huge the html generated is very big. Is it possible to break this up into multiple pages, like contents on 1st page, its associated news on separate pages?

This will help the html files to load on mobile/ereader devices more easily.
[...]
hari

Also here, I fully agree, such a huge html is pretty inconvenient on the Iliad. In principle it is possible to change this, however, currently getfeed is built to generate a single file, and changing this will be a lot tougher than your first point, and it would probably require some major redesign. I'll think about it...

On the other hand, the html file that is created, has been intended primarily as input for tools such as html2epub or html2mobi, to get an output that's actually optimised for mobile reading.
I consider it only an intermediate file format (or for reading on the (desktop) computer)

Some ideas:
Using the -C parameter you can automatically start a program which uses the outputfile to convert it to mobi.

Personally, I don't use the html file on my Iliad, but a pdf that's been created by LaTeX. The relevant parameters are:

### This is the LaTeX output
-F tex
-C pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode >/dev/null
-P ~/iliad.sty
-o ~/src/perl/rss/myFeeds.tex

where my style file is

\usepackage[
lmargin=0.25cm, 
rmargin=0.25cm,
tmargin=0.25cm, 
bmargin=0.25cm, 
nohead,
%paperheight=14.7cm, 
paperheight=16.5cm, 
paperwidth=12.2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{bookman}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage[utf-8]{inputenc}
\pagestyle{empty}
\newcommand{\mytitle}[2]{
  \noindent\rule{\textwidth}{0.7pt}\\ 
  \mbox{ }\\[3ex]
  \begin{center}
    {\Huge\bf #1}\\[3ex]
  \end{center}
  \mbox{}\\[2ex]
  \noindent\rule{\textwidth}{0.7pt}\\
  \vfill
    \hfill{\Large \emph{#2}}\\
  \noindent\rule{\textwidth}{0.7pt}\\
  \newpage
}
\pagestyle{empty}
\sloppy

produces documents with dimensions optimised for the Iliad using the full-screen ipdf: (paperheight=16.5cm, for use with the standard ipdf, better use 14.7cm as paperheight)

Best regards,
Tommy

[rhari79]

Originally Posted by Tommy

Some ideas:
Using the -C parameter you can automatically start a program which uses the outputfile to convert it to mobi.

Thanks for this idea.
I tried to use html2mobi from the mobiperl kit. This produced a neat mobi file with hyperlinks etc.,

However..

I was looking for this utility mainly as a replacement for mobipocket on my n95, by reading html on my itouch. The mobipocket reader on desktop seems to get bogged down when i put in too many rss links. The generated. mobi works great on my n95. however i dont have a full fledged utility to read mobi on itouch..textReader doesnt support hyperlinks on mobi or html. Stanza et al is too painful to load.

I took a page out of your suggestion and did a few exernal tweaks..i now have a data file with name and rss url pairs. Awk reads this file and then invokes getfeed.pl. So i can now generate individual html files, and then have awk write a rudimentary html index/contents html file. Then scp this entire folder into the itouch(pre connected via itunnel). This works great and reads comfortably on both n95/itouch.

But after all this still have an issue. the html is not reflowed requiring me to scroll from one end to the other for each line. So using plain html seems not such a great idea and have to rest using mobi on my itouch.

Thanks..hari

[Tommy]

Originally Posted by rhari79

Thanks for this idea.
I tried to use html2mobi from the mobiperl kit. This produced a neat mobi file with hyperlinks etc.,

However..

I was looking for this utility mainly as a replacement for mobipocket on my n95, by reading html on my itouch. The mobipocket reader on desktop seems to get bogged down when i put in too many rss links. The generated. mobi works great on my n95. however i dont have a full fledged utility to read mobi on itouch..textReader doesnt support hyperlinks on mobi or html. Stanza et al is too painful to load.

I don't know textReader, but I had brief glance at Stanza and found it quite nice, except for getting my stuff onto the itouch. That's really a pain in the a*

I took a page out of your suggestion and did a few exernal tweaks..i now have a data file with name and rss url pairs. Awk reads this file and then invokes getfeed.pl. So i can now generate individual html files, and then have awk write a rudimentary html index/contents html file. Then scp this entire folder into the itouch(pre connected via itunnel). This works great and reads comfortably on both n95/itouch.

But after all this still have an issue. the html is not reflowed requiring me to scroll from one end to the other for each line. So using plain html seems not such a great idea and have to rest using mobi on my itouch.

Thanks..hari

I tested the html-output on my itouch as well, and I have to agree, that's not really satisfactory if I hold it vertically. Horzontally, it's much more agreeable, though. Still, I prefer the PDF on my Iliad

And thanks for mentioning itunnel, I'll surely have a look at this one..

Best regards,
Tommy