(Getting Started) Prev | Index | Next (Setting Options)
Olive does not mimic GUI-style user interfaces by implementing
text-based menus, controls, and the like. Instead it takes programs
like mutt as its inspiration and stays out of your way
as much as possible. Transient panels and message dialogues aside,
the Olive UI is composed of 4 components (listed here
top-to-bottomly): Title Bar, List Pane, Status Line, and Story
Pane. Only the List Pane and Story Pane can be interacted with in
any meaningful way.
Focus is shifted between the List Pane and Story Pane with the
'w' key, but this is rarely needed anymore.
The titlebar is simply the top line of the window, used to display Olive's name and version number in white-on-blue text.
|
| Olive b7
|
You can hide the titlebar and have this line of screen real-estate for your own use. See Section 3.2.4 for details on how to do this.
The top half of Olive's window is used by the List Pane. This is where the stories from the feeds currently in your feed list are displayed, one story per line. Each line displays the following information:
Stories are sorted as follows:
If there are both new and old stories present in the list, a separator line of dashes will be displayed between them.
TITLE FEED AGE S U
|------ (Width - 29 chars) -------| |-- 16 chars --| |- 7 -| 1 1
| Martian rover rolls free of trap BBC News 00h 52m @
| Pacman comes to life virtually BBC News 00h 38m * @
| Many dead in Nepalese bus blast BBC News 00h 12m @
| ----------------------------------------------------------------
| China dismisses US Tiananmen call BBC News 03h 38m * -
| Japanese firms raise investment BBC News 04h 12m -
The age field displays 'HHh MMm' for stories less than
one day old, 'DDd HHh' for stories between 1 and 100
days old, '___+99d' for stories 100 or more days old,
and '____???' for stories with no date (or invalid
dates) in their RSS data.
The Starred indicator displays '*' for stories you have
flagged as starred and nothing for stories which are
unstarred. See Section 2.4 for more information
on this.
The Read/Unread indicator displays '@' for unread
stories and '-' for stories which you have already
read. As you read stories, they will remain in place among the new
stories until the next feed poll (see
Section 3.3) occurs; they will then
be sorted with the old stories.
The list cursor is displayed as a bolded reverse-video bar spanning the width of the pane.
| Martian rover rolls free of trap BBC News 00h 52m @
| Pacman comes to life virtually BBC News 00h 38m * @
| Many dead in Nepalese bus blast BBC News 00h 12m @
| --------------------------------------------------------------
| China dismisses US Tiananmen call BBC News 03h 38m * -
| Japanese firms raise investment BBC News 04h 12m -
When the cursor is moved from the currently selected story, that story is displayed in bold face:
| Martian rover rolls free of trap BBC News 00h 52m @
| Pacman comes to life virtually BBC News 00h 38m * @
| Many dead in Nepalese bus blast BBC News 00h 12m @
| --------------------------------------------------------------
| China dismisses US Tiananmen call BBC News 03h 38m * -
| Japanese firms raise investment BBC News 04h 12m -
The cursor will return to the top of the list when a feed poll occurs.
Between the List Pane and the Story Pane sits the Status Line. It is a single line which displays various and sundry informational mesasges for you. It cannot be turned off, but its behavior can be modified.
Most of the status line is taken up by the Staus Area. If enabled as per Section 3.2.1, the Status Area will display a message in the following format when no other activity is happening:
|
| [S: 1/175] [U/N: 21/21] [P: 5 @ 05:45 | 6 since 02:41] [F: F,S]
|
It is read as follows:
[S: n/n][U/N: n/n][P: n @ HH:MM | n since HH:MM][F: X,Y,..Z]F for
flagged feeds and S for starred stories. If no
filters are active, this block will not display at all.
When polling is active, the Status Area displays brief messages about the polling process (Checking..., Fetching..., etc.) for each feed being polled. When the Story Pane is focused, the Status Area displays the title (the actual title, taken from the feed, not the nickname displayed in the story list) of the feed from which the currently selected story is taken.
The rightmost character of the Status Line is the Focus Pointer. It
simply points to whichever of the the List Pane (^) or
the Story Pane (V) is focused.
The bottom half of Olive's window is used by the Story Pane. This is where the content of (and some other information from) the currently selected story is displayed.
| Story Title | ----------- | | -- Header | | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer | adipiscing elit. Vivamus rhoncus libero. | | Aenean sit amet risus sed felis molestie | hendrerit. Pellentesque feugiat mauris. | | -- | http://someurl/pathto/story.html
The List and Story panes, as well as the feed Edit and Remove
panels, have capabilities much like those
of the Unix utility less.
/' to start a search, then...Enter, which will
cause the cursor to jump to the first matching line, or
display Not found if there is no match.
n' to repeat the search forward or
'N' to repeat it backwards,
Enter to select the current match and end the
search or...
q' to end the search without selecting
anything.
The selection cursor in the List Pane is moved one line at a time
with the up and down arrow keys or the 'j' and
'k' keys, Pressing Enter selects the
current story and causes its contents to be loaded into the Story
Pane.
Cursor movement and story selection functions are combined in the
'[' and ']' keys, which select the
previous and next stories,respectively.
The cursor can also be moved one screen at a time
with PgUp and PgDn, or to the top and
bottom of the list with Home and End.
Individual stories can be marked or unmarked as read with the
'm' and 'u' keys. All stories can
be marked/unmarked at once with 'M' and
'U'.
When the Story Pane is focused, the story text can be scrolled one
line up or down with the arrow keys or the 'j' and
'k' keys. It can also be scrolled one screen at a time
with PgUp and PgDn, or to the top and
bottom with Home and End.
Nearly all stories will have a single link URL attached to them
which leads to a fuller or permanent copy of the story from the
feed. This URL is displayed after the story text, and can be
followed by pressing the 'l' (ell) key.
Some news stories have URLs embedded in their content, in addition
to the dedicated link URL. These can be accessed by pressing
'L', which will pop up a Linklist in the top-right
corner of the Olive window.
.[ Linklist ]-----------------------------------.
| |
| [ 6] permalink ||
| [ 7] incorporated ||
| [ 8] entry #|
| [ 9] discovery #|
| [10] Patrick Stewart #|
| [11] Circulating intentional data ||
| |
| < Cancel > |
| |
'-----------------------------------------------'
The numbers correspond to markers which are placed in the story text, as in:
On the test version of the catalog he has [incorporated][7]
tagging, which he discusses in a recent [entry][8] on his blog.
Select a link with the Up/Down arrow keys and
press Enter to launch an external browser session with
the URL of that link as the
target. If Global Story Paging has
not been disabled, the story text can be paged while the Linklist is
displayed. The linklist will be dismissed when you Tab
to the "Cancel" button and press Enter.
Olive has a pair of selector mechanisms to help you separate the wheat from the chaff in your newsreading: starring stories and flagging feeds.
Starred stories will remain in your story list even after they have
"fallen off" the feed they were sourced from. This lets you force
stories to stick around if you need them for later reference. The
star flag of a story is toggled on/off with the 's'
key. Once unstarred, a story will be removed from the story
database if it is no longer in the feed it came from. The secondary
effect of starring stories is that you can filter the story list to
show only the currently starred stories with the 'S'
key.
Unlike starred stories, which are immortal, There is nothing special
about flagged feeds except that you have "flagged" them as special
in some way. For instance, I flag the feeds which belong to journals
of my friends, marking them as distinct from the general news feeds
I subscribe to. The story list can be filtered to show only stories
from flagged feeds with the 'F'
key. See Section 4.1 for information on
flagging feeds.
(Getting Started) Prev | Index | Next (Setting Options)
$Id: news.html 368 2006-01-05 01:20:15Z mdxi $