RSS readers are immensely helpful to also interact with image (such as web comics) and video (Youtube channels) feeds.
Alas, a terminal interface is a decisively bad choice for that.
Some terminal emulators – e.g., kitty – can show images inline. I use `toot` and `tooi` to read the Fediverse in kitty, and the images are there alright.
You don't need to stay completely in the terminal interface. I use newsboat. I have configured it such that if I want to open any media links like that, one keystroke opens them in a new firefox window on top of everything. One can also use something like mpv or imagemagick if firefox feels too "heavy."
I use Dillo for science articles.
I wish more sites added images (in the <enclosure> tag preferably) to their RSS posts. I think images are the perfect middle ground between spicing up pure textbased posts and not being distracting videos on autoplay.
With my self-built reader (link in bio) I'm always delighted to see posts with photos or images attached.
Plug: I made https://github.com/ratatui/ratatui-image for ratatui projects (like this one), and terminals that support some image protocol. It falls back to some ASCII-art.
I tried to use neomutt a few months ago, and found that all email is now just a mime encoded minefield. too bad, I liked the mutt workflow over having to have a browser opening and checking for stuff.
What if I don't like beans?
I used to read USENET news in text terminals on X11 systems, and on 3270 terminals before that. It's amusing how we're coming full circle.
text is king. The rise of LLMs helped reinforce that nicely IMO.
Will it also have client functionality to support reader like miniflux or tiny tiny rss, like in newsboat?
No plans for that yet. Feedr is currently standalone-only.
Terminal seems like an odd choice for a platform to read on, considering the fixed-width characters.
I say fixed-width characters are a feature, not a bug.
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TUIs are so nice.
Please consider using Trolley to package this for non-technical users:
Does it use ffmpeg to render inline images to ASCII?
There is an old Android app named "Feedr". Many people still use it, even though it's not listed on the Play Store anymore. Not to mention "Feeder".
Nobody is going to be able to find this by name when you have such a generic one.
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