DRSS Manual
===========
Bernd Stramm <bernd.stramm@gmail.com>
v0.3, January 2010

DRSS is a RSS news feed reader. It allows you to keep track of a number of news
sources, such as online newspapers, websites and blogs, without having to visit
every single one of them. You just look through a list of new items
and decide which ones to visit on the web.

Feed readers work similar to email clients, except that the stories (items) are
pulled in on demand, rather than being pushed in by the sender. Using RSS news feeds,
the user can subscribe and unsibscribe much more easily compared to mailing lists.


[[Feeds]]
== Feeds and Folders

.Opening a Feed
To open a feed and view stories, *double click* on the feed title in the feed list window.

.Editing a Feed
To edit a feed, you can

* *Right click* on the feed title in the feed list window, and select *Edit* from
the popup menu,
* Select *Feed->Edit*  from the menu bar to edit the current feed.

Either way, you get a new window with the current settings of feed information.
You can change all of it.

Be aware that changing the link URLs may cause the feed to stop working, or it
may cause a different feed to be connected.

.Editing a Folder
Folders are edited in the same way as feeds.

.New Feeds
To connect to a new feed, select *Feed->New Feed* from the menu bar.
This will bring up a window asking you for the feed link. Often you will
have the feed link from a website. Type of paste the link URL, press Return
or click the *OK* button. Click on *Cancel* if you don't want a new feed.

DRSS will try to connect to the feed site, and will start a feed edit window
to show you what it has found. If the feed was not found it will tell you. If the 
feed was found but could not be decoded, it will tell you.

New feeds are always created at the top level. If you want the feed to
be inside a folder, you move it there after creating it.

.New Folders
You can add new folders by selecting *Edit->New Folder*, and entering a
folder name when prompted. Note that folder names do not have to be unique.

New folders are always created at the top level. If you want the folder
to be in another folder, you move it there after creating it.

.Moving Feeds
You can move a feed from one folder to another by the normal click-and-drag mechanism.

.Deleting Feeds
You can get rid of a feed by editing it, and clicking on the *Delete* button.

.Deleting Folders
You can get rid of a folder by editing it, and clicking on the *Delete* button.

.Deleting Non-Empty Folders
[CAUTION]
====
Deleting a folder that is not empty will delete all of its content.
====

=== Importing Feed Lists
You can import feed lists from in _OPML_ format, or in _DRSS_ format.
_OPML_ format is used by some other news readers, so this can be useful
if you have an old list.

*Note* that _OPML_ feed lists are flattened, meaning that the directory
structure is not preserved.

*Note* also that imported feed list are added in their entirety, they are
_not_ merged. This means that you can get duplicates in your feed list
when importing.

[[Stories]]
== Stories
After opening a feed, a list of available news stories is displayer in the
story list window. Each story is what RSS calls an _item_, and Atom calls 
an _entry_.

* To read a story, click on the title in the story list.

* To read the next story, click on the *next story* button, or select *Story->Next* from
the menu bar.

* To read the previous story, click on the *back* button, or select *Story->Back* from
the meny bar.

* To view the web page of the current story, click the *visit story* button. Some feeds
provide links to a web page with more details of the story.

== Buttons
There are four buttons on the main window.

image:visitstorybutton.jpg[]:: Click on the *visit story* button to
go to the current story on the website, using your browser. Typically an
RSS feed provides only a summary
of the story, and a link to the full story on a website. 
This button hands that link to the default browser in your system.

image:backbutton.jpg[]:: Move back one story on the list of stories from the 
current feed.

image:nextstorybutton.jpg[]::  Move forward one story on the list of stories from the 
current feed.

image:exitbutton.jpg[]:: Exit the DRSS program. 

image:mailbutton.jpg[]:: Email the current story. DRSS takes parts of the current story,
and composes an email message with subject. Then your email program is called for you to
finish the message. Whether this works depends on your system settings. Especially it
depends on whether you have a default email program configured, and whether that
email program is any good.

image:clock.jpg[]::  The clock is not a button. It is provided so that you
can see how much time you are wasting reading news.


== Prerequisits

To build and run DRSS, the current version uses:

. C++
.. Gcc or Visual C++
. Qt4, including these parts:
.. Core
.. Gui
.. Network
.. Xml
.. WebKit

=== How to Build

It's pretty straightforward. Please read the INSTALL file that comes with
the source code.

== License and Warranty ==

This is free open source software, hence the usual licensing. And the 
usual warranty, or lack thereof:

****
These programs are distributed under the terms of the 
GNU General Public License version 3.

See the file *LICENSE.txt* for the complete text of the license. You can
also find it on http://www.gnu.org. Or you can select *Help->License* from the
menu bar to see a copy.

This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, 
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty 
of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. 
****


____

 
~Copyright (C) 2009 http://www.bernd-stramm.com/[Bernd Stramm] All Rights Reserved~
____
