Hussein Esmail

html2rss

What is this page?

This page is a more in-depth explanation as to why I made this repository.

Hussein, why'd you make this repository?

The first thing you need to know is that I use a terminal RSS reader called newsboat. I like it because it can be very compact and require less screen space compared to a browser window to display the same amount of information. I also like it because multiple platforms use and support RSS, like YouTube and Reddit.


In Reddit RSS feeds, tags like 'h1', 'a' (with an href), etc. in the content of the RSS post are not surrounded by brackets, but they are surrounded by escape codes for them. When this is like this, newsboat can actually detect when the 'a' has an href, and headings. When it detects links in this type of post, you can type the associated number key to open that specific URL. For example, Google will be viewed on newsboat as "Google[2]" (but underlined). This means if I pressed "2" while viewing this article, it will open Google in my default web browser.


Considering that I want these URLs to be formatted nicely, someone else probably might be able to benefit from this too, so this is why I put this on GitHub and didn't just keep it for myself. You could even write another script that processes your subscribed feeds through this or run your own feed through this before publishing. Now go! Make RSS easier to use!