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# Sfeed_curses: a curses UI front-end for sfeed
Last modification on 2025-07-24
sfeed_curses is a curses UI front-end for »sfeed«.
It is now part of sfeed.
It shows the TAB-separated feed items in a graphical command-line UI. The
interface has a look inspired by the »mutt mail client«. It has a sidebar
panel for the feeds, a panel with a listing of the items and a small statusbar
for the selected item/URL. Some functions like searching and scrolling are
integrated in the interface itself.
## Features
* Relatively few LOC, about 2.5K lines of C.
* Few dependencies: a C compiler and a curses library (typically ncurses).
It also requires a terminal (emulator) which supports UTF-8.
* xterm-compatible shim »minicurses.h«
* Easy to customize by modifying the small source-code and shellscripts.
* Plumb support: open the URL or an enclosure URL directly with any program.
* Pipe support: pipe the selected Tab-Separated Value line to a program for
scripting purposes. Like viewing the content in any way you like.
* Yank support: copy the URL or an enclosure URL to the clipboard.
* Familiar keybinds: supports both vi-like, emacs-like and arrow keys for
actions.
* Mouse support: it supports xterm X10 and extended SGR encoding.
* Support two ways of managing read/unread items.
By default sfeed_curses marks the feed items of the last day as new/bold.
Alternatively a simple plain-text list with the read URLs can be used.
* UI layouts: supports vertical, horizontal and monocle (full-screen) layouts.
Useful for different kind of screen sizes.
* Auto-execute keybind commands at startup to automate setting a preferred
layout, toggle showing new items or other actions.
Like the format programs included in sfeed you can run it by giving the feed
files as arguments like this:
sfeed_curses ~/.sfeed/feeds/*
... or by reading directly from stdin:
sfeed_curses < ~/.sfeed/feeds/xkcd
It will show a sidebar if one or more files are specified as parameters. It
will not show the sidebar by default when reading from stdin.
Screenshot showing what the UI looks
On pressing the 'o' or ENTER keybind it will open the link URL of an item with
the plumb program. On pressing the 'a', 'e' or '@' keybind it will open the
enclosure URL if there is one. The default plumb program is set to »xdg-open�…
but can be modified by setting the environment variable $SFEED_PLUMBER. The
plumb program receives the URL as a command-line argument.
The TAB-Separated-Value line of the current selected item in the feed file can
be piped to a program by pressing the 'c', 'p' or '|' keybind. This allows much
flexibility to make a content formatter or write other custom actions or views.
This line is in the exact same format as described in the sfeed(5) man page.
The pipe program can be changed by setting the environment variable
$SFEED_PIPER.
Screenshot showing the output of the pipe content script
The above screenshot shows the included »sfeed_content« shellscript which uses
the »lynx text-browser« to convert HTML to plain-text. It pipes the formatted
plain-text to the user $PAGER (or "less").
Of course the script can be easily changed to use a different browser or
HTML-to-text converter like:
* dillo
* links
* w3m
* webdump
It's easy to modify the color-theme by changing the macros in the source-code
or set a predefined theme at compile-time. The README file contains information
how to set a theme. On the left a »TempleOS«-like color-theme on the right a
»newsboat«-like colorscheme.
Screenshot showing a custom colorscheme
It supports a vertical layout, horizontal and monocle (full-screen) layout.
This can be useful for different kind of screen sizes. The keybinds '1', '2'
and '3' can be used to switch between these layouts.
Screenshot showing the horizontal layout
## Clone
git clone git://git.codemadness.org/sfeed
## Browse
You can browse the source-code at:
* https://git.codemadness.org/sfeed/
* gopher://codemadness.org/1/git/sfeed
## Download releases
Releases are available at:
* https://codemadness.org/releases/sfeed/
* gopher://codemadness.org/1/releases/sfeed
## Build and install
$ make
# make install
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