[TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

I didn't like any of the current RSS and Atom readers, so have started to write one. Initially I'd like to get a simple (which it certainly is just now!), stable reader out there and then add things like good offline reading support.

Although Nibbles is still in its infancy, I've found it to be stable enough to use all the time. It's reached the stage where I think it could do with some more exposure to real world use. Although the focus right now is on reliability, I'd love to hear any feedback, suggestions or ideas for features you have.

If you'd like to try out the current preview release and help the development of a better feed reader for your internet tablet, please refer to my blog post:

http://mark.scottishclimbs.com/2008/...ader-for-maemo

Mark

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

hmm, ill give it a spin. the default reader just drives me nuts with its insistence on downloading images...

still, if the image on the page is any indication of the interface, im not sure ill like it. i ok with the default reader interface in that it shows the feed as a single page that you can scroll...

err, for whatever reason it seems to not install here...

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

I am currently using claws as my feed reader but have been searching for something else. I tried to install nibbles but ran into problems. I posted my problems to the project as requested. I get an error during the install on my n810

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

There is already Feedelity which can do offline-reading. But I'll give it a spin. more choice is always good :).

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

feedelity imo has ones of the most annoying interfaces i have come across, with using claw-mail (or any other mail client for that matter) as a feed reader as a close second...

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

What are this apps dependences?

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Interesting, I'll bear it in mind.

In Nibbles, you can use the "+" and "-" buttons to hide the feed and then article lists if you like.

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Thanks a lot for posting the bug. I've replied with some suggestions of things to try to help debug the problem.

Has anyone else managed to get the app correctly installed and running via the .install file?

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

my issue with the default reader and photos are that even with the image cache off it will start to download any images found in the feeds when a refresh is triggerd. and if you cancel that it will again try to download them when you read the actual feed.

thing is that i often connet to the net via a mobile phone, paying by the megabyte...

but then its not the only feed reader with a problem. the one found in opera mini also ignore any image settings you may have for the browser itself...

as one may tell, im very picky about feed readers...

and no, i have yet to geet it to install using the .install file...

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

ruby, ruby1.8-maemo (>= 0.3.0), rubygems-feed-normalizer, rubygems-atom, ruby1.8-sqlite3, lynx

Some of those packages has some dependencies too. All of the individual .debs are available in my repository (the .install file) or here:

http://code.scottishclimbs.com/maemo.../binary-armel/

I packaged the rubygems-*, lynx, mercurial and nibbles packages. The others are files I'm mirroring while the maemo.rubyx.co.uk repository is down.

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Hmm. Are you able to tell me what happens when you try, please?

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Installed fine here on my n800 with os2008. By the way Is it a planned feature to download complete articles, including comments? That is a thing i miss most in the default RSS reader, besides the poor use of screen estate in the article-list, and the non-finger friendly devide between the viewpanes.

Some features I would like:
- sidepane optionally containing only the finger-friendly feed icons as buttons to select to save screen estate.
- side pane display/hide toggle
- possibility to download whole articles, 'mark for download' selectionboxes, and state indicators (downloading/downloaded/error)
- purge, autopurge,option to purge older than x days
- maybe a way to detect number of comments? would involve html scraping I guess.

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Phew, it's not just me! Any other success/failure stories with the .install file?

Definitely want to download complete articles/linked pages for offline reading. This won't happen immediately but I see it as a pretty essential feature. I'm still thinking about how the comments ideas would be implemented.

An excellent idea.

The "+" and "-" buttons do this just now.

These are all planned features once I'm confident enough that the basic feed parsing and reading code is pretty stable.

Thanks a lot for your thoughts,

Mark

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Installing nibbles 0.0.4-1
Selecting previously deselected package ruby.
(Reading database ... 23121 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking ruby (from .../ruby_1.8.6_armel.deb) ...
Unpacking libruby1.8 (from .../libruby1.8_1.8.6-p110-1_armel.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /media/mmc2/.apt-archive-cache/libruby1.8_1.8.6-p110-1_armel.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/un.rb', which is also in package ruby
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Unpacking ruby1.8 (from .../ruby1.8_1.8.6-p110-1_armel.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /media/mmc2/.apt-archive-cache/ruby1.8_1.8.6-p110-1_armel.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite `/usr/bin/ruby', which is also in package ruby
Selecting previously deselected package libgems-ruby1.8.
Unpacking libgems-ruby1.8 (from .../libgems-ruby1.8_0.9.4-4_all.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package lynx.
Unpacking lynx (from .../lynx_2.8.6-1_armel.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package rubygems.
Unpacking rubygems (from .../rubygems_0.9.4-4_all.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package rubygems-hpricot.
Unpacking rubygems-hpricot (from .../rubygems-hpricot_0.6-1_armel.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package rubygems-simple-rss.
Unpacking rubygems-simple-rss (from .../rubygems-simple-rss_1.1-1_armel.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package rubygems-rubyforge.
Unpacking rubygems-rubyforge (from .../rubygems-rubyforge_0.4.0-1_armel.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package rubygems-rake.
Unpacking rubygems-rake (from .../rubygems-rake_0.8.1-1_armel.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package rubygems-hoe.
Unpacking rubygems-hoe (from .../rubygems-hoe_1.4.0-1_armel.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package rubygems-feed-normalizer.
Unpacking rubygems-feed-normalizer (from .../rubygems-feed-normalizer_1.4.0-1_armel.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package rubygems-atom.
Unpacking rubygems-atom (from .../rubygems-atom_0.3-1_armel.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package ruby1.8-sqlite3.
Unpacking ruby1.8-sqlite3 (from .../ruby1.8-sqlite3_1.2.1-1_armel.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package ruby1.8-maemo.
Unpacking ruby1.8-maemo (from .../ruby1.8-maemo_0.4.0_armel.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package nibbles.
Unpacking nibbles (from .../nibbles_0.0.4-1_armel.deb) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
/media/mmc2/.apt-archive-cache/libruby1.8_1.8.6-p110-1_armel.deb
/media/mmc2/.apt-archive-cache/ruby1.8_1.8.6-p110-1_armel.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

hmm, it innstalled fine if i did the ruby stuff and lynx manually first...

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

ill be...

while copying over some feeds from the osso reader, i found a small checkbox that allowed me to turn of images pr feed. talk about hiding it in plain sight...

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

installed fine on n800, it got all pre-reqs by itself. Easily configured to read new york times.

seems to me the item summaries in nibbles are more succinct. it that my imagination?

nibbles does not show articles. it launches the web browser to actually read rhem. right?

In the article list, I have several copies of same article listed. nibbles sees old as new? i have 2 in black and one in red. is red new or old?

i wish i could mark these as 'keep' or 'forget' or 'not read'

What do buttons at bottom do? I see no effect from the one that looks like 2 clipboards.

Was guessing the round arrow button forces an update of article list?

For me, offline reading would be the biggest feature.

PJ

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Good news, thanks tso. Do you have an n800 or an N810? So far, I've only heard of success stories from N800s and only heard failures from N810s, but not enough of either to really tell.

Thanks,

Mark

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

n800 with os2008 installed ok.

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Yay! Fingers crossed that it works on N810s too.

I think it is your imagination! I certainly don't truncate them at all, just display them as they come.

That's right. At the moment Nibbles uses the text browser Lynx to format the HTML summaries and the built-in browser to view complete articles. This may change in the future as the ruby-gecko bindings are due to be released for Maemo soon.

It would be an option to use Lynx to view the full articles within Nibbles instead of lauching in a browser. Would you prefer that as a possibility?

Red means that you haven't viewed that article, black means you have.

Duplicate articles sound like a bug though (Nibbles should be smart enough to not create duplicates for edited articles). Can you tell me the feed URL for the feed with duplicates, please? Or you can file a bug report...

Yes, but it currently only updates the selected feed (a silly choice, next version will update all, if the button is still there). The other button marks all articles in the selected feed as read. Marking articles as "keep", etc will come, but not immediately.

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it.

Mark

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Nibbles is working fine for me so far. I had first to remove some Ruby stuff I had and add a Ruby lib and Ruby. I added a bunch of NY Times feeds and am reading them.

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

i have a N800.

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

I've just released version 0.0.5. You should be able to upgrade to this from the application manger.

This version introduces article purging (currently will delete articles older than one week when Nibbles exits - this will be configurable soon). You have the ability to mark articles as "don't delete" by clicking the column left of the article title.

I've also added a view menu where you can hide/show the feed and article lists and some feedback messages when updating feeds.

I changed my mind and realised that lots of people would probably want this at the same time as the purging code.

Any feedback welcome, as usual.

Mark

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Red usually means 'urgent' or 'error'. How about follow the webpage convention, i.e. navy-colored means visited, or bold versus regular ?. I usually already know which ones I have read. Also sometimes I click on a link but stop reading halfway. Then it would be marked as 'visited' but that doesn't tell me which articles I have finished reading.

A thing that I like about the default rss reader is he way that it displays both the titles and summaries in the same viewpane. That way I can just scroll instead of select individual titles to determine which ones to read.

I thought a bit more about my 'show number of comments' idea. Should be doable with a regular expression since most pages with comments say something like 'x comments'. Then you only need to know the word 'comment' in 160 languages!.

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Thanks for letting me know. Can you remember what Ruby stuff you had to remove first?

Mark

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

I just updated to the latest, looking cool! And I really like that it opens new browser window. Trying out nibbles, I can't help but think how this could be a great solution for a simple podcast client.

Currently, something like bbc/global news works/looks good.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/globalnews/rss.xml

You get a list of episodes, a concise description, and the 'complete story' button links right to the .mp3

It would be neat to have a second nibbles... pibbles ;) just for podcasts where the button at the bottom is replaced with real simple play/pause/stop/download icon/buttons linked directly to the mp3 to either stream (could this be done transparently?) or download to choice of location. Purging or keeping links to all available past episodes should be a choice... i often go back to listen to old shows, esp my travel related subs.

I'm not a programmer... is it easy to extract link to mp3 and send it straight to media player or too a save as prompt? I'd think many would love such a simple podcast streamer/downloader.

Thanks for the new rss reader choice! :)

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

" Originally Posted by geneven View Post
Nibbles is working fine for me so far. I had first to remove some Ruby stuff I had and add a Ruby lib and Ruby. I added a bunch of NY Times feeds and am reading them.

Thanks for letting me know. Can you remember what Ruby stuff you had to remove first?"

There is a Maemo-specific Ruby program that I had to remove. I forget what else. I had some indication that there was a Ruby conflict, so I just removed all things Ruby (temporarily) and Nibbles installed. Some of the things I took out might have been ok.

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

for me, viewing in lynx would be fine, but need to have 'save' or print to file. I'm reading as research for class, and there's no point otherwise.

The server where i see double posts is

http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/US.xml

I've not seen this problem since upgradinged to 0.0.5

Thanks for the program. New flagger is nice
pj

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

The colours seems like a fair suggestion. Version 0.0.5.1 makes unread articles blue and feeds with unread articles bold.

This is one thing I really dislike about the default reader. It works reasonably for me when the articles are short, but feeds with lots of longer posts are real pain. Nibbles will (sometime) have either a hardware of software button to skip to the next unread article, so you can just hide the article list if you like.

Yeah, this should work often enough to be useful. I've noted it down, but it's not a high priority just now.

Thanks,

Mark

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Cool - glad you're liking it! It'll hopefully improve some more over the next few weeks.

The podcast stuff sounds great and I'll definitely consider adding it later. However, I'm loathe to spend too much time on it until we get some important 'normal' feed reading things done first.

The podcast episodes work just like normal articles, so you can flag them (which marks them as "don't purge"). Once we get offline reading for articles this should work exactly the same way for the episodes.

It should be pretty do-able to transparently send or download episodes, but I've not looked into it yet.

Cheers for the ideas,

Mark

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

I've just released a new development release, 0.0.6.1. You should be able to upgrade via the Application Manager.

New in this release:

* A (very) simple settings dialog to configure auto-purging and feed updating
* Favicon support in the feed list (not finger friendly yet)
* Better handling of feeds with lots of articles
* A bunch of fixes and wee things

Any feedback gratefully received. Please report bugs to the tracker.

Mark

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

I've just released version 0.0.7. What this version lacks in new features, it makes up for with improved speed and bugfixes.

This version includes:

* Improved startup time
* Drag scrolling on the article frame
* The hardware zoom buttons now map to a list frame each
* Many bugfixes, including several crashers
* Much improved list handling code has made things faster and more stable

Have fun and please report any issues to the tracker. Thanks for playing!

Mark

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Yeuch - just released 0.0.7.1 which fixes the nasty bug that would prevent new users from starting Nibbles. Ouch.

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Thanks for all work on this!

I was just wondering, I know this is a work in progress and you have many plans for adding things yet. Should I add any features I would like to see to the tracker in the Garage? I have dropped a couple of suggestions in other places and I am sure you have a list of things you want to add yet but I thought adding them to the tracker might be helpful.

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Hi Ron,

I've made a half-hearted list of things on the Garage wiki, but I'd much rather have them on the tracker. Posting things there would be a real help and could save something good from being forgotten.

Cheers,

Mark

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

I appreciate the work you are doing on this and your responsive ness.

I have added a bunch of ideas to the tracker. Many of these are things I have seen in other readers (mainly desktop ones) that I liked. Some may not be feasible on the tablet but I figured I would list them just in case.

Keep up the great work!

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Well, I've mucked with it a few times, but thing just doesn't want to go. It opens, and it loads the current default feed, but I can't add any new feeds. I go to add feed and put in: www.engadget.com/rss.xml
It says it's fetching the feed, but it never shows. The new link and articles are non-existent. Here's the output when run from the terminal:

/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/libosso.rb:127: warning: tried to create Proc object without a block
Fetching feeds at Sat Mar 08 14:39:36 -0800 2008...
http://mark.scottishclimbs.com/feed/maemo/atom.xml
finished fetching - sleeping...
www.engadget.com/rss.xml
Address family not supported by protocol - socket(2)
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `initialize'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `open'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `connect'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:48:in `timeout'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:76:in `timeout'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `connect'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:553:in `do_start'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:542:in `start'
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/nibbles/lib/feed_fetcher.rb:66:in `download'
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/nibbles/lib/feed_fetcher.rb:33:in `fetch'
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/nibbles/lib/window.rb:178:in `add_feed_dialog'
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/nibbles/lib/window.rb:177:in `initialize'
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/nibbles/lib/window.rb:177:in `new'
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/nibbles/lib/window.rb:177:in `add_feed_dialog'
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/nibbles/lib/window.rb:174:in `run'
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/nibbles/lib/window.rb:174:in `add_feed_dialog'
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/nibbles/lib/window.rb:92:in `setup_menu'
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/nibbles/nibbles:126:in `call'
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/nibbles/nibbles:126:in `main'
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/nibbles/nibbles:126
Fetching feeds at Sat Mar 08 14:42:55 -0800 2008...
http://mark.scottishclimbs.com/feed/maemo/atom.xml
finished fetching - sleeping...
Purging old articles...


Now, the first part before "sleeping" is when it loads the article. The following is when I attempt to add a feed. I then quit. Starting it back up still shows the single default feed. The error occurs wether I prefix the address with http:// or not.

Now, I first thought my issue was dependencies. My app-manager says I did not have ruby1.8-libxml and sqlite3 installed (I currently have sqlite installed). I installed ruby1.8-libxml, but I could not install sqlite3 since libsqlite3-0 is nowhere to be found. Mind you, none of these were requested by the Nibble debian installer anyways.

The "Address family not supported: seems to be a common error due to ip6 stuff and is not an issue:
http://www.openldap.org/faq/data/cache/652.html

I'm not sure if the rest of the lines are errors or just standard logs. I know quite a few languages, but I've never had a reason to dig into Ruby (just a tad of Python is all).

Anyhow, I'd LOVE to get Nibbles running, so any suggestions would be excellent. Thanks for any help!

- Jim

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Just FYI, I already have ruby1.8-maemo, ruby1.8-sqlite3, and lynx installed and running fine.

Ugh...guess I better sign up for an account on Maemo Garage.

- Jim

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Hi Jim,

Is it only the Engadget feed? Can you try some others?

I can reproduce the Engadget problem on my N800. It's a strange problem, since it works fine on my desktop (identical Nibbles code).

It's expected that the initial feed (Mark's Maemo posts) is empty, since there haven't been any posts in the last 5 days (default configuration setting).

You shouldn't need ruby1.8-libxml. It sounds to me like the installer got all of your dependencies right (I doubt you'd get as far as you have without them).

The other lines are the backtrace from the "Address family not supported exception". I'll look into that bug, it's not immediately obvious what's wrong.

Good luck (let me know if you have any luck with other feeds),

Mark

Re: [TESTERS WANTED] Nibbles - a feed reader
 

Here's some info on that "Address family not supported" bit. It appears the most you can do is subdue the error message, but then you risk not getting information if that error occurs on the real IPv4 socket. Alternatively, I suppose you could re-compile the kernel to support IPv6, but I doubt that is worth the trouble. ;)
http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread172735.html

Anyhow, I've tried 3 other feeds with identical results. I'm running OS2008 51-3 with a N800. Virtual memory is turned off.
slashdot.org/index.rss
feed://www.macnn.com/macnn.rss
feed://crave.cnet.com/8300-1_105-1.xml

- Jim