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

Update 11.22.10:

1.0.7 : simple gestures on the item list : swipe to right to mark item as read, and to left to mark item as unread

1.0.6 : click on the right part on an item's line in the item list to display the context menu (you can always "long press" to display it)

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Update 10.20.10: Gread is available in extras-devel !

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Update 09.14.10: some ui enhancement

A screenshot of the last version (clic to see full size):

http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/2o71l5.png

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Update 09.13.10 : new version, fully rewriten (except UI).

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Original message, 08-18-10:

Author of the blog "nokia-n900.fr" (not very active these times) since october, but with my own n900 from a month, i decided to wrote a Google Reader application, because the only one i found and tried, grr, didn't work very well for me.

So i found a lib for google reader "libgreader", in python (my preferred language), i added a lot of stuff in it, and i chose QT as toolkit (perhaps my app will work on Meego (i am also the author of meego-os.fr) and, with an eye open to the grr source code, here is GRead.

It's a work in progress but the first step is almost reached.

The main goal is to have a Google Reader application as good as the "Newsrob" one on Android i used before having my Nokia n900.

The first step is to create an application with the basics, as we have in "grr"
The next step is to add real offline capabilities.

This firs step is currently done minus keybord shortcuts, but with many improvements:

- more settings (for interface)
- choose between feeds or labels at launch
- works too on 2G/3G (for me grr works only on wifi)
- auto-rotation
- thread for network operations
- manage auto-reconnect, detect lack of connectivity (all operations will be done when the network is available)
- allow to show original feed content in the application (using QTWebkit) or in the browser
- see more special feeds (shared and starred, but also "all", "friends", "notes"...)
- scroll long titles

There is some little bugs and lacks:

- unread count not always sync in feeds list when some item are read (without doing a resync), and specially for special feeds
- GRead does not connect the device to network, it just uses the current one
- no shortcuts yet
- no zoom in the item view
- and so on :)

I currently work a lot on this application,

And notice it also runs on linux out of the box (the only package needed, except PyQt, is simplejson). libgreader is included with GRead.

You can found the source code on GitHub : http://github.com/twidi/GRead

To launch GRead, simply execute the gread.py file in the src directory

PS : if i found a easy way to make a package i'll do it, i actually don't know how to do this.

PPS : i just saw the topic about grr

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

Some screenshots :

Settings :

http://a.imageshack.us/img686/3385/settings1.th.png

http://a.imageshack.us/img121/4366/settings2.th.png

http://a.imageshack.us/img213/2184/settings3.th.png

Feed list (mode "labels") with the "special feeds" label opened:
http://a.imageshack.us/img411/1193/feedlist1.th.png

Same with a normal label :
http://a.imageshack.us/img442/9121/feedlist2.th.png

The item list :
http://a.imageshack.us/img8/4161/itemlisth.th.png

And it's menu :
http://a.imageshack.us/img706/6895/itemlistmenu.th.png

And then the menu of the item view :
http://a.imageshack.us/img717/4449/itemviewmenu.th.png

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

I really like what I see until now, but to do the jump from grr to yours, one feature ist missing. I need the j and k buttons to jump to the next entry otherwise its very uncomfortable.
Another thing I would change is the title of the entry in the title bar...if the headline is a long one it needs up to 3 seconds to get the meaning.
I would prefer the name of the feed along with the unread count in the title bar and the title of the feedentry under it.

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

Thanks for your message.

The keyboard shortcuts are really important and i will manage then asap.

For the title bar, now the scroll is faster in the lat version on github (twice).

Btw It is possible to show a message (the horizontal yellow stuff) with the title, because i am not fan of a bar under the title which will take too much place (it's always too much on small screens)

In this latest version i also enhanced the portrait mode (smoother between different windows) and the capabilities to zoom in the browser with the volume buttons.

The next thing will be i think the shortcuts (i miss then too) and then inconsistency in unread counts between the feed list and the item list.

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

I just pushed on github a new version with
- j (or n) and k (or p) shortcuts (more shortcuts later, i wanted to add them quickly)
- a message with the title is shown when a new item is selected

Enjoy :)

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

Twidi, I see you use python and PyQt just like me. Ive got 2 apps (nothing fancy) in Extras-devel (see my signature), I'd gladly help you with packaging questions/issues you might have.

Let me know!

PS: and I also speak French :D

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

I'd love to see a Google Reader app with a good desktop widget...

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

El Amir : thanks in advance, i will contact you when needed :)

thearcane : actually it's really not my priority, but later why not. You could try "greader"

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

Hi Twidi,

Thanks for the PM. I'm French too, so you don't need to bother with English there :-)

Although the new (forked) version of Grr is much improved and almost enough for my needs, I'm still interested in Gread:

- because it looks even better :-)

- because it's in Python so maybe I could help (although you seem far ahead of me there...)

- and especially because it might also run on Maemo4/Diablo. I still use my N810 at home and I haven't found any GR client for it, GR Mobile in the browser isn't so great...

I'll give it a try tonight and see how it goes. If it doesn't use any Mameo5-specific APIs (like the new Qt-Mobility etc.) it should work.

If you need anything else, just shout :-)

Edit: ah, and I see from the screenshots that it also has the "All" list that is lacking from Grrr... good job !

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

Look for something called "pyPackager" by Khertan (Benoît Hervier, another Frenchman :-). That could help you.

Edit: look here first...
http://wiki.maemo.org/PyPackager

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.

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

Any update??

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

Ditto. I'm hoping this promising looking app will be update soon....;)

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

i'm working on it. no time last week. some stuff on the engine now and then adapt the ui. Maybe a first releae tuesay in the evening...

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

I think the main work is done on the engine. Yesterday was borring, i had a network problem which took too much time to get resolved.
Now i can work again on the UI to adapt it to the new engine.

Stay tuned !

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

BTW, GReader does work on Maemo4/Diablo after all ! Just a couple of lines to comment out... looks very strange (a bit like on Windows), but runs :-)

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

That's a great news !! Can you give me your patch ? Or maybe you can wait the new version and then, give me your patch :)

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

I dunno if deleting two lines can be called a "patch", but it's right here :
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=61877
:-)

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

Thanks, i'll check this :)

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

Excuse the git-newb, but this didn't work. What am I doing wrong? TX

Getting this into -devel anytime soon? :rolleyes:

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

Just download the zip or tar archive...

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

I didn't make any archive... and for the git clone you could try the url "Git read-only" :

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

There is one, so github must make it automatically.

Exactly what I did (re-check my post) & resulted in the error.

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

Maybe you didn't, but GitHub does it for you : just click the "Download source" button up right, choose between zip and tar, and that's it... WorksForMe :-)

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

grog : Hmm you said

i told you to test :

not "exactly" the same urls ;)

fpp : didn't see it :o thanks :)

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

But the http protocol should work as well. Maye there is something wrong with the git installation?

BTW: whats about the new version? Any new info when it could possibly be released?

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

Right :o Got it now :D

But still doesn't work:

BTW, this is done on the device itself, not that that should make a difference.

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

Thats what I ment. It is no difference whatever protocol you choose.

Which git package do have installed? Did you try cloning other git repositories?

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

That should not make any difference but that should work so the try needed to be done :)

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

Not that I want to beat this to death, but it works fine on my (linux) PC, so there must be something wrong or missing with git on the N900.

There was quite a bit of difference using the different protocols however. While the program source (the src & zoomkeys directories) are the same (as they should be) the HTTP protocol seems to draw down a of "cruft" into the .git directory than GIT. Not a problem, just an observation. :)

Thanks for the help.

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

i personaly have no problem with git on my n900, and sometimes i use it to commit !