Re: [Announce] GRead : yet another Google Reader application... (PyQt)
 

Okay, status report : first on the N810, Maemo4/Diablo

First, lots of manual dependency installs. Full PyQt package is broken, some missing dependency on OpenGL. A workaround is to install the PyQt Demo, which works, but is not full PyQt.

So afterwards you need to apt-get install the missing bits as Greader complains: qt-network etc.

Finally everything is there and the app seems to launch, shows a windows for a second and then quits with the following Python exception:

File "/home/user/MyDocs/twidi-GRead-229f5d0/src/ui/Ui_settings.py", line 42, in setupUi
self.inputSettingsAccount.setInputMethodHints(QtCo re.Qt.ImhEmailCharactersOnly|QtCore.Qt.ImhNoAutoUp percase)
AttributeError: 'QLineEdit' object has no attribute 'setInputMethodHints'

Strange... Qt/PyQt bug or version problem ?

Too bad, as I don't have any other choice on Maemo4 :-)

Re: [Announce] GRead : yet another Google Reader application... (PyQt)
 

Next, on N900/Maemo5 :

Much easier to get going of course, so the remarks are mostly about usability...

First, on the main screen I don't see a list of my feeds, just the "All" special feed, is that normal ?
In Grr I have only my individual feeds and no "All" option... I'd like both :-)

Next, in landscape mode with keyboard, navigation is cool enough. I can think of many more useful keys to support (backspace, M, R etc. :-). The scrolling title, however, is VERY distracting, I'd like an option to disable it as the popup is much better...

Portrait mode is very convenient for RSS feeds, but without the keyboard, in its present state GRead has no practical means of navigation, same as the original Grr. The icon menus on TheBooTroo's "Grr Remade" are the right way to go IMHO, even if they're a big large (hey, yet another Frenchman ? :-).

Finally, I'm not sure the "internal" preview with Qwebkit is really useful : opening the page in MicroB is about as fast, and more versatile if you want to browse from there...

We'll make it the best GR** yet ! :-)

Re: [Announce] GRead : yet another Google Reader application... (PyQt)
 

packaged yet?? please put it up on extra devel!

Re: [Announce] GRead : yet another Google Reader application... (PyQt)
 

I like the latest version very much.
I see a very good solution for the title in the informationbox, but maybe the popup should only appear if you navigate with the keyboard because if you are coming from the itemlist you could already read the title and the yellow line is just annoying.

I realised that the zoom and the specialfeedlists (exept for all) are currently not working. Should they?

Re: [Announce] GRead : yet another Google Reader application... (PyQt)
 

Some news for GRead :

• the annoying yellow line with title is remplaced by a less intrusive text box (there is a little glitch with long titles)
• some shorcuts where added (more or less the same as grr) :

• in item list and item view : you can use the back key to return to the previous view (you can also use Esc on the desktop version)
• in item list :

• shift-A => mark all feed as read (same shortcut as in Google Reader)
• f => fetch more content
• r => refresh the list

• in item view :

• m => toggle read state (same shortcut as in Google Reader)
• s => toggle starred flag (same shortcut as in Google Reader)
• shift-s => toggle shared flag (same shortcut as in Google Reader)
  And as in the previous version :
• j/n => go to the next entry in the list
• k/p => go to the previous entry in the list

I'll add m/s/shift-s shortcuts in the item list soon but i had to do things differently. And i'll also add arrows and space shortcuts to navigate in the browser (as in grr)

Known bugs :

• can't retrive a feed if an entry has no title (bug in libgreader i had to patch)
• browser can't display image if in 2G/3G (because for me QNetwork doesn't work in cellular mode (2G/3G))
• sometimes cannot run operations when network is switched from wifi cellular mode to wifi, of wifi to cellular, or sometimes after losing cellular network and retrieving it

And now some answers to your questions/reports

fpp : yeah french man :)

Thanks for your reports :

• InputMethodHints was introduced with QT4.6 but i think you have 4.5 on Diablo. As i use QT Designer to create the UI i don't know how to handle this case.
• for the list of your feeds, did you see a "(1)" before "GRead" in the title ? This number is the the number of operations witing/running. So if you have this "(1)" it's that your feed list was not retrieved yet. You can see some informations about this operation in the terminal from which you launched GRead. And if in the "Specials" category you only show the "All" feed, perhaps yo uhave just this one checked in your settings ?
• in landscape you now have some shortcuts as i said
• for portrait mode, no keyboard, you have the menu to do some actions on the current entry. I have an idea for a way to navigate to next/previous entries (without toolbar for the moment)
• i take note on what you said about the scrolling title, i'll add on option for this.
• for the internal preview, i find it usefull when i know that original is not so heavy or when the browser is not launched (it takes sometimes a lot of time). And note that clicked link are always opened in the real browser

hotzigetty : i'll check that soon, i promise :)

Tranquility : thanks :) Here some answers :

• the way of showing title is not the same now and less disturbing, tell me what you think of it
• the zoom only works in the item view, but i had to do some code in C++ and include the .so file with GRead, i don't know it it's the good way to do it, but it works for me... :-/
• strange for the feeds in the "Specials" category as they are "standard". Have you some informations printed in the terminal from which you launched GRead ?

Re: [Announce] GRead : yet another Google Reader application... (PyQt)
 

Nice job, & thanks for listening, will try the new version right away !

Re: [Announce] GRead : yet another Google Reader application... (PyQt)
 

The titleview is amazing and the only idea I have to improve it is to let it only vanish if the entry has body. There are many feeds which only provide the title.
It would be nice if it were possible to use the shortcuts for refresh and fetch in the itemview.
And somehow its not possible to use the zoom it only vhanges volume. Maybe it would be better anyway to select a fontsize in the settings.
These are my ideas for now. You are doing a great job!

Re: [Announce] GRead : yet another Google Reader application... (PyQt)
 

I keep your ideas on mind.

Can someone else tell me about the zoom (with volume keys) while viewing an entry ?

And now a (not so) little word about the dev :

I'm currently rewriting all the code... When i started this project it was my first "no-web" project for many, many years (i remember delphi and powerbuilder in late 90's) and QT was really new for me (it's not the case for python). So i added code step by step, test after test...

And now the way the application is coded is not very good... a big file with 1000+ lines (and some little others). And views management and data operations are mixed together, althought i have a "operation.py" file and the "libgreader.py".

And with this code it will not be easy to add feature... so i am currently splitting each views in is own file, with another for the controller.

I will also work a lot on the operation system to have at least two threads instead of one (one for retrieving content, another to execute action : mark read, star, share) and to manage opposite operations...

"opposite operations ?" With the current operations manager, if a timeout occurs, the operation is moved from the head of the queue, to the tail, and others are running before it. It can cause problems with state changing. If i mark read an entry (by viewing it) and then mark it as unread, i expect the read operation be done before the unread, but with this system, it a timeout occurs for the read operation, the unread one could be done before the read one and finally the item will be marked as read... I have to manage this.

So this is a lot of work to separate all code and rewrite this operation manager, and i sadly will add new features (i have a lot in stock !) only when these tasks will be done...

I hope you understand this :) (fyi i think it will take me two or three evenings)

PS : and i'll take this opportunity to comment my code :)

Re: [Announce] GRead : yet another Google Reader application... (PyQt)
 

How is it going? I am waiting patiently and been checking github and this thread every two hours or so because 2 or 3 evenings are over ;)

Re: [Announce] GRead : yet another Google Reader application... (PyQt)
 

It's a lot of work because i'm doing things better than i thought :)

The "operations" layer works like a charme (although i have one thing to do to make it "perfect"... ah ah) and is ready for multi-accounts (but there will be no multi-account mode in the ui for now). The "models" layer is almost ready, and can handle the retrieval of *all* unread items, i have just one thing to do for this layer to say it's ready.

Then i'll have to split the ui in many files, and reconnect all events to the new "models" layer.

In this version nothing will be new in the UI. But the main enhancement is that when GRead is launched, all (unread) content can be viewed without network (and the "n" last read content as later you could set in settings, but a fixed number for now, say 40)

There is no save to local storage yet, but it should not be to difficult with the new way i wrote the application.

When this version will be done, i'll publish it here and then do some work :

• preload media in items (images, enclosures) to view them offline
• settings for each feed
• save and load feeds from local storage

But currently it's a long work to do things correctly and so it takes some time (and after work only)

Stay tuned !

PS : and i have a lot of ideas too for the future !
PPS : with the new layers system, it should be easy to wrote differents UIs, say one for maemo, one for desktop... one for meego handset, one for meego tablet... and even none, to run in daemon mode for synchronizing content in background.