fix: copy item link + update dependencies
chore: update dependencies
chore: update dependencies
photon is a RSS/Atom reader with the focus on speed, usability and a bit of unix philosophy.
With the current state of rss readers, which are archaic, or use electron for rendering, photon wants to bring a "fresh look" within terminal, with pictures!
It's extensible with lua plugins and can use opencl for image scaling and making paletted image.
You need a sixel supporting terminal emulator (Use foot or try alacritty-sixel also on AUR).
First install go
(min version 1.18), git
and scdoc
, then:
git clone https://git.sr.ht/~ghost08/photon
cd photon
make
sudo make install
AUR: photon-rss-git
$ yay -S photon-rss-git
photon's philosophy is to be a some kind of rss viewer. So it doesn't have features like adding or managing feeds. photon can be started with a list of urls:
$ photon https://static.fsf.org/fsforg/rss/news.xml https://itsfoss.com/feed/ https://blog.golang.org/feed.atom\?format\=xml
Or it can be directly fed with the feed data:
$ curl -s https://www.reddit.com/r/pics.rss | photon -
Or using ratt and playing magnet links directly with mpv:
$ ratt auto https://1337x.to/top-100 | photon -
Or searching youtube using ratt:
$ ratt auto https://www.youtube.com/results --data-urlencode="search_query=MyQuery" | photon -
Or it can parse a file with feed urls separated by new line (and comments too):
$ cat mychannels.txt
#youtube - LunusTechTips
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=LinusTechTips
#youtube - Rob Braxman Tech
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCYVU6rModlGxvJbszCclGGw
#odysee - Lunduke on Tech" > mychannels.txt
https://lbryfeed.melroy.org/channel/odysee/@Lunduke:e
$ photon mychannels.txt
Or it can call a external command, must be specified with the cmd://
prefix:
$ echo "cmd://ratt auto https://videoportal.joj.sk/slovania" >> mychannels.txt
$ photon mychannels.txt
Or by default running photon with no arguments will try to read ~/.config/photon/config
.
So the feed management is up to the user with arguments, text files and creating scripts like:
$ cat photon-reddit.sh
photon mysubreddits.conf
$ cat mysubreddits.conf
https://www.reddit.com/r/popular.rss
https://www.reddit.com/r/news.rss
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny.rss
https://www.reddit.com/r/memes.rss
Config files documentation: man photon.5
.
Because photon is a "viewer" (like an image viewer, video player, ...) it doesn't have a 'manage feeds' feature, ora 'item read' feature. photon just shows the contents of the feed(s).
Can be found in the man pages
man photon
Always one card is highlighted, we call it selectedCard
. To navigate to other card you can use h
,j
,k
,l
(which means: left, down, up, right).
p
will play the media link
o
will open the card's link in the default web browser (or default application).
yy
- copy card link to clipboard
r
- refresh feeds
Card media/link/image can be downloaded. All downloads are saved automatically to the default downloads folder $HOME/Downloads
. This can be changed with the --download-dir
argument.
dm
- download media
dl
- download link content
di
- download image
Any keybinding can be prepended with a numeric value, like in vim. So you can type 10j
and the selectedCard
will move 10 rows down.
Searching is done with pressing /
and then typing the query. photon will filter the visible cards by finding the query in either the card's title, description, feed's title.
By pressing ENTER
, photon will show the article view, where it scraps the card's link and extracts the title, top image and main text content.
The article view also has three modes:
ARTICLE
- shows the scrapped article content
DESCRIPTION
- shows the item.Description
CONTENT
- shows the item.Content
Article view in DESCRIPTION
or CONTENT
mode, can use a external tool to render the text. By default w3m
is used, but can be changed with the --article-renderer
argument, or PHOTON_ARTICLE_RENDERER
environment variable.
photon is designed strongly for media viewing/playing, it will try to extract the direct media link of the card. By following the unix philosophy, Do One Thing and Do It Well, photon want's to be just a feed viewer, so media extraction is done by external tools. By default yt-dlp is used. This can be changed with the --extractor
argument or PHOTON_EXTRACTOR
environment variable.
By the content type of the media, photon will run it in either a video player (default mpv) or a image viewer (default imv).
If the link is a magnet link, or a torrent file, photon will run it in a torrent downloader/player (default mpv with the webtorrent-mpv-hook script).
So you can play torrent videos directly from photon. Try: photon https://nyaa.si/?page=rss
(and install the webtorrent-mpv-hook it's awesome!).
--image-cmd
, --video-cmd
and --torrent-cmd
arguments, or PHOTON_IMAGECMD
, PHOTON_VIDEOCMD
and PHOTON_TORRENTCMD
environment variables, are used to change the default behavior.
photon will automatically load lua scripts from ~/.config/photon/plugins/*.lua
.
These plugins help to extend the functionality and make photon do whatever the user needs. Lua plugins can subscribe for events or register new keybindings and modify the state. Take a look at some user scripts.
Plugins documentation: man photon-lua.5
.
Example plugin:
--import the photon events module for subscribing on events
events = require("photon.events")
--subscribe to the Init event
events.subscribe(events.Init, function()
print("Hello photon!")
end)
Sometimes you need a little cookie to get the data that you want :P
For this photon has some http setting for every request that will be send:
--cookie="KEY=VALUE;KEY=VALUE;..."
for setting cookies for all outgoing http requests
--header="KEY=VALUE;KEY=VALUE;..."
for setting headers for all outgoing http requests
--user-agent="myphoton"
for setting the User-Agent header for all outgoing http requests
--insecure
ignore the ssl cert
File bugs and TODOs through the issue tracker or send an email to ~ghost08/photon@todo.sr.ht.
For general discussion or patches, use the mailing list: ~ghost08/photon@lists.sr.ht.
Join the IRC channel: #photon on irc.libera.chat
Or join my matrix room: #photon on matrix.mgyar.me
Anyone can contribute to photon:
Once you are happy with your work, you can create a commit (or several commits). Follow these general rules:
git log --oneline
.Fixes:
trailer with the commit id and its title.There is a great reference for commit messages in the Linux kernel documentation.
Before sending the patch, you should configure your local clone with sane defaults:
git config format.subjectPrefix "PATCH photon"
git config sendemail.to "~ghost08/photon@lists.sr.ht"
And send the patch to the mailing list:
git sendemail --annotate -1
Wait for feedback. Address comments and amend changes to your original commit. Then you should send a v2:
git sendemail --in-reply-to=$first_message_id --annotate -v2 -1