# The &akregator; Handbook

Frank Osterfeld

    frank.osterfeld@kdemail.net

Anne-Marie Mahfouf

    &Anne-Marie.Mahfouf.mail;

2006 Frank Osterfeld
2006 &Anne-Marie.Mahfouf;
&FDLNotice;
2006-12-08
1.2.5

&akregator; is a program to read RSS and other online news feeds.

KDE Akregator

## Introduction

### What is &akregator;?

&akregator; is a &kde; application for reading online news feeds. It has a powerful, user-friendly interface for reading feeds and the management of them.

&akregator; is a lightweight and fast program for displaying news items provided by feeds, supporting all commonly-used versions of RSS and Atom feeds. Its interface is similar to those of e-mail programs, thus hopefully being very familiar to the user. Useful features include searching within article titles, management of feeds in folders and setting archiving preferences. Feeds can be displayed in a similar manner to e-mails. Websites related to a feed can be shown in &akregator;'s embedded browser or, at the users' choice, opened in an external browser.

### RSS and Atom feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an &XML;-based format used for publishing news or articles in a machine-readable form. An RSS or Atom file is also called a feed. A program that can be used to read such feeds is called a feed reader or aggregator, hence the title of the application, &akregator;.

&akregator; automatically extracts new items from the feed and displays them in a human-friendly form to the user. The user can therefore save time with regularly-visited websites, as they need no longer manually check whether there are new pieces of information available.

RSS is available in different versions which are not compatible with each other (this situation caused by competing companies): RSS 0.9, RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0. Atom is also an &XML;-based feed language which has been redesigned to fit the needs of webloggers and news sites. Atom attempts to replace RSS feeds and remove the uncertainty with incompatiblities in the different RSS versions.

## Quick Start to &akregator;

This section describes how to start using &akregator;. It explains the user interface and shows you how to add your own feed to the list. This section is particularily interesting if you are not yet familiar with the general RSS/Atom and feed aggregator concept.

### The Main Window

When you first start &akregator;, you see its main window: &akregator; main window

&akregator; main window

The main window consists of the feed list, the article list and the article viewer.

The feed list is on the left. In the tree, you have news feeds you can select. A news feed is a collection of articles: for example, the recent news of a news site or the new entries of a blog. The default list contains feeds related to the &kde; project, but of course you can add your own feeds and remove the ones you are not interested in. All articles are fetched

All articles are fetched

In the upper right is the article list. It contains all the articles of the feed selected in the feed list (if it is empty, you must first fetch the feed). The list shows the headlines of the articles and the date when they were published. By default, the newest articles are at the top. The article list

The article list for one feed

If you select an article, it will be displayed in the article viewer in the lower right of the window. Depending on the feed, it contains either only a headline, a short summary, or the complete article content. Reading an article from Planet &kde;

Reading an article from Planet &kde;

### Adding a feed

&akregator; provides you with some default feeds related to &kde; - of course, you probably want to add your own feeds. Good candidates are the news sites you visit regularly.

- Go to the menu Feed and choose Add Feed... or use the default keyboard shortcut (Insert). The following dialog appears, with an input line labeled Feed URL:. Add a new feed

  Add a new feed

- Enter `www.slashdot.org` or `http://www.slashdot.org` in the line edit next to Feed URL and click OK.

- The feed settings dialog appears and you can modify the default options. When you are happy with the feed settings, click OK again. The feed properties dialog

  The feed properties dialog

- Now Slashdot has been added to your feed list.

There are multiple other ways to find and add interesting feeds. Within KDE, websites browsed with &konqueror; will display the recognizable "RSS lozenge" in the bottom-right if a compatible news feed is detected at the website. Just left-click on the icon and choose Add Feed to &akregator;: Automatically finding feeds through &konqueror;

Automatically finding feeds through &konqueror;
On pages with this RSS icon , right-click on the icon and choose in the context menu Add Feed to &akregator;: Automatically finding feeds through &konqueror;
Automatically finding feeds through &konqueror;

### Creating a Folder

After adding your own feeds, you may want to group them in some way, rather than just leave them unsorted. So let us create a folder for the Slashdot feed we just added:

- Select the parent folder of the new folder. In this example, we select All Feeds.

- Open Feed New Folder.... Enter `News` (or a more appropriate name for the feed category) in the line edit and choose OK. The New Folder dialog

  The New Folder dialog

- Now you can drag the Slashdot feed to the new folder. The News folder in the feed list

  The News folder in the feed list

### Browsing inside of &akregator;

When reading feed articles, often you may want to read the web page that belongs to the article: some articles only contain the headline, and not the actual content. In this case, you need to visit the web page to read the complete article. Or perhaps an article links to some website, or you are reading a blog and want to comment on an entry. For these situations, &akregator; contains a simple web browser. Whenever you follow a link in the article viewer, &akregator; opens the link in new tab:

Note that the browser in &akregator; is not intended to replace your favorite Web Browser. It is meant for reading articles, commenting on them, or following up a link quickly. It is not meant for browsing the web in general. It lacks many features fully-fledged web browsers offer.

## Configuring &akregator;

Most of &akregator;'s options are listed in the &akregator; configuration dialog. The configuration dialog can be found in the menu under Settings Configure &akregator;...

### General

The General tab contains the basic and otherwise-uncategorizable options of &akregator;.

The General tab
The General tab

Global
  Show tray icon

    Display the &akregator; icon in the systray.

  Use notifications for all feeds

    Set global notifications for all feeds. This setting will override the individual notification value of each feed. When enabled, &akregator; will notify you of all new articles fetched in any feed. If you only want to enable notifications for some (but not all) feeds, leave this option disabled and enable notifications for the each specific feed using the individual feed properties dialog.

  Use interval fetching

    If this is unchecked, interval checking is disabled. However, if this is checked, you can set in Fetch feeds every: the interval that &akregator; will automatically check for new feed entries. Note that fetching articles generates traffic and therefore may be costly to the provider hosting the feed you're reading. Some sites may even block connections from your computer if you attempt to fetch the feed too often. In general, 30 minutes is a good choice.

  Fetch feeds every:

    This is enabled when Use interval fetching is checked. You can specify a time interval, after which feeds are checked for new articles. Default is 30 minutes.

Startup
  Mark all feeds as read on startup

    When enabled, &akregator; marks all articles as read when started.

  Fetch all feeds on startup

    When enabled, &akregator; fetches all feeds right after start.

Network
  Use the browser cache (less network traffic)

    When enabled, the &kde;-wide browser cache settings are used when updating feeds. You can configure the &kde;-wide browser cache either in &kcontrolcenter; or in &konqueror; configuration dialog.

    You should leave this option enabled whenever possible. Disabling this option leads to increased network traffic. The traffic caused by aggregators not using caching increases the costs for providers and may decrease the number of feeds are offered in future.

### Archive

Archiving articles means storing the links of articles. Here you can limit the number of articles stored and the method used for archiving. These settings are global settings, used by all feeds within &akregator;. If you want to use a custom setting for a feed, you can set it in each feed properties dialog in the archive tab.

The Archive tab
The Archive tab

Default Archive Settings
  Keep all articles

    All articles are kept forever.

  Limit feed archive size to:

    If the number of articles exceeds the chosen limit, the oldest articles are deleted. Note that flagged articles are ignored when counting the number of articles: if your limit is 500, and you have 510 unflagged and 50 flagged articles, &akregator; will ignore the 50 flagged ones and only delete the 10 oldest unflagged articles. So in this example, 550 articles would be kept.

  Delete articles older than:

    Articles older than the specified number of days are deleted from the archive, unless they have the keep flag set. &akregator; checks for expired articles at startup and then once per hour, so expiry may be delayed.

  Disable archiving

    No articles are stored - all articles are discarded when quitting &akregator;.

Do not expire important articles

  Right clicking on an article opens a context menu where you can mark this article as Important. Articles marked as Important will not expire, they will be kept.

### Appearance

On this page you can configure the appearance of the article viewer and the browser tabs. You can specify the font sizes and families to be used.

The Appearance tab
The Appearance tab

Font Size
  Minimum font size

    Set the minimum size for the article viewer

  Medium font size

    Set the default font size for the article viewer

Fonts
  Standard font:

    In the article viewer, the content is rendered using the Standard font in Medium font size. If you change the Standard font, the change will be applied in the article viewer.

  Fixed font:

    If the article uses a fixed-width font in the article viewer, the content will be rendered using this font family in Medium font size.

  Serif font:

    If the article uses Serif fonts, they will be rendered using the family you choose here in Medium font size.

  Sans serif font:

    If the article uses Sans-serif fonts, they will be rendered using the family you choose here in Medium font size.

Underline links

  Check this if you want links to be underlined by default.

### Browser

This tab allows you to customize the behavior of the internal browser tabs.

The Browser tab
The Browser tab

Left mouse click

  You can choose three actions for the Left mouse click action: Open in Tab (open the link in a tab and put this tab in focus), Open in Background Tab (open the link in a tab but keep the current tab in focus) and Open in External Browser (open in a new window with your default browser).

Middle mouse click

  As above, you can set one of the three actions for the middle mouse click.

For External Browsing
  Use default &kde; web browser

    If this is checked, &akregator; will use the web browser you set in &kcontrolcenter;. It may be the KDE default, &konqueror;, or another browser depending on what you set here.

  Use this command:

    You can use another web browser for &akregator; other than your &kde; default. If you wish to do so, check this option and enter the command for the browser, provided it is in your $`PATH`.

Show tab close button on hover

  If this option is checked, the close button will appear when you move your mouse on the left side of the tab title so you can more easily close tabs.

### Advanced

The Advanced tab allows you to set more advanced options. If you are not sure about their effect, you can just leave the dafault ones.

The Advanced tab
The Advanced tab

Archive
  Archive backend:

    &akregator; currently only uses the Metakit database but for &kde; 4, &akregator; will offer other database backends.

Article List
  Mark selected article read after

    Default is 0 seconds, which means that as soon as you click on an article it is marked as read. You can choose to mark any article as read after a specified number of seconds.

  Reset search bar when changing feeds

    This will clear the search bar when you change feed.

## Command Reference

### Menus and Shortcut Keys

#### The File Menu

File Import feeds...

  Open the import feeds dialog

File Export feeds...

  Open the save as dialog

&Ctrl;P File Print...

  Open the print dialog

&Ctrl;Q File Quit

  Quit &akregator;

#### The Edit Menu

F2 Edit Edit Feed...

  Edit current feed to change its properties in the Properties dialog

&Alt;Delete Edit Delete feed

  Delete current feed

&Ctrl;C Edit Copy

  Copy selected text to the clipboard

&Ctrl;A Edit Select All

  Select all text in the article viewer

&Ctrl;F Edit Find...

  Launch the Find Text dialog to allow you to search for text in the article viewer

F3 Edit Find Next

  Go to the nearest match (down the list) of the search term (text or regular expression) searched for within the article viewer, starting from cursor position

#### The View Menu

View View Mode

  Choose the View Mode for &akregator;

&Ctrl;+ View Increase Font Sizes

  Increase the font size in the article viewer

&Ctrl;- View Decrease Font Sizes

  Decrease the font size in the article viewer

#### The Go Menu

Left Go Previous Article

  Go to the previous article in the article list

- Go Previous Unread Article

  Go to the previous unread article in the article list

Right Go Next Article

  Go to the next article in the article list

+ Go Next Unread Article

  Go to the next unread article in the article list

P Go Previous Feed

  Go to the previous feed in the feed list

&Alt;- Go Previous Unread Feed

  Go to the previous unread feed in the feed list

N Go Next Feed

  Go to the next feed in the feed list

&Alt;+ Go Next Unread Feed

  Go to the next unread feed in the feed list

#### The Feed Menu

Insert Feed Add Feed...

  Open the Add Feed dialog

&Shift;Insert Feed New Folder...

  Open the Add Folder dialog

&Ctrl;R Feed Mark Feed as Read

  Mark the current feed as read

&Ctrl; &Shift;R Feed Mark All Feeds as Read

  Mark all feeds as already read

F5 Feed Fetch Feed

  Fetch the current feed

&Ctrl;L Feed Fetch All Feeds

  Fetch all feeds

Escape Feed Abort Fetches

  Stop &akregator; fetching feeds

#### The Article Menu

&Shift;Return Article Open in Tab

  Open the current article in a tab within &akregator;

&Ctrl; &Shift;Return Article Open in External Browser.

  Open the current article iin an external browser

&Ctrl;I Article Mark as Important

  Mark the current article as important

Article Mark as

  Mark the current article as Read, New or Unread

Delete Article Delete

  Delete the current article

Article Send Link Address...

  Open your mail client and attach the link in the mail.

Article Send File...

  Open your mail client and attach the file in the mail.

#### The Settings Menu

Settings Toolbars

  Toggle the toolbars

Settings Show/Hide Statusbar

  Toggle the statusbar

Settings Show Quick Filter

  Toggle the Quick Filter (Show/Hide it) The Quick Filter

  The Quick Filter
Settings Configure Notifications...

  Display the Notifications Settings dialog

Settings Configure &akregator;...

  Display the &akregator; settings dialog

Settings Configure Shortcuts...

  Open standard &kde; setting dialog that allows you to choose different shortcut keys for different actions

Settings Configure Toolbars...

  Configure the items you want to put in the toolbar

#### The Help Menu

&help.menu.documentation;

## Credits and License

&akregator;

Program copyright 2004-2006 Frank Osterfeld frank.osterfeld@kdemail.net

Documentation copyright 2006 Frank Osterfeld frank.osterfeld@kdemail.net

Documentation copyright 2006 &Anne-Marie.Mahfouf; &Anne-Marie.Mahfouf.mail;

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## Installation

### How to obtain &akregator;

&install.intro.documentation;

### Compilation and installation

&install.compile.documentation;
&documentation.index;