Emacs hnreader - Read Hacker News in Emacs

Front page:

Comments:

Intro

This package renders hackernews website at https://news.ycombinator.com/ in an org buffer. Almost everything works.

The org-mode buffer feature interactive links similar to html.

Features that are not supported are account related features. You cannot add comment, downvote or upvote.

Install

Manual: TBD

Melpa

Spacemacs layer:

https://github.com/thanhvg/spacemacs-eos

Dependencies

promise and request are required. User must have org-mode 9.2 or later installed also.

Commands

hnreader-news: Load news page.
hnreader-past: Load past page.
hnreader-ask: Load ask page.
hnreader-show: Load show page.
hnreader-newest: Load new link page.
hnreader-more: Load more.
hnreader-back: Go back to previous page.
hnreader-comment: read an HN item url such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1 this is handy when you have the link and want to read it in emacs, takes url as param
hnreader-org-insert-hn-link: insert hn link to org buffer, take url as param

Remarks

Listing buffer is called *HN* Command buffer is called *HNComments*

Most of links in Hacker News buffer will run elsip commands on clicking, by default org-mode will ask you for confirmation. You can disable org confirm message on clicking

(setq org-confirm-elisp-link-function nil)

But it is not recommended by the org-mode guide: just change it to ‘y-or-n-p’ if you want to confirm with a single keystroke rather than having to type “yes”.

Recommended settings for eww

eww can be used to view story. You may want to set these settings for web page display inside Emacs:

(setq shr-width 75)
(setq shr-use-fonts nil)

When displaying pictures srolling over them is jumpy. You can try this hack in your config:

(with-eval-after-load "shr"
    (defun shr-put-image (spec alt &optional flags)
      "Insert image SPEC with a string ALT.  Return image.
SPEC is either an image data blob, or a list where the first
element is the data blob and the second element is the content-type.
Hack to use `insert-sliced-image' to avoid jerky image scrolling."
      (if (display-graphic-p)
          (let* ((size (cdr (assq 'size flags)))
                 (data (if (consp spec)
                           (car spec)
                         spec))
                 (content-type (and (consp spec)
                                    (cadr spec)))
                 (start (point))
                 (image (cond
                         ((eq size 'original)
                          (create-image data nil t :ascent 100
                                        :format content-type))
                         ((eq content-type 'image/svg+xml)
                          (create-image data 'svg t :ascent 100))
                         ((eq size 'full)
                          (ignore-errors
                            (shr-rescale-image data content-type
                                               (plist-get flags :width)
                                               (plist-get flags :height))))
                         (t
                          (ignore-errors
                            (shr-rescale-image data content-type
                                               (plist-get flags :width)
                                               (plist-get flags :height)))))))
            (when image
              (let* ((image-pixel-cons (image-size image t))
                     (image-pixel-width (car image-pixel-cons))
                     (image-pixel-height (cdr image-pixel-cons))
                     (image-scroll-rows (round (/ image-pixel-height (default-font-height)))))
                ;; When inserting big-ish pictures, put them at the
                ;; beginning of the line.
                (when (and (> (current-column) 0)
                           (> (car (image-size image t)) 400))
                  (insert "\n"))

                (insert-sliced-image image (or alt "*") nil image-scroll-rows 1)
                ;; (if (eq size 'original)
                ;;     (insert-sliced-image image (or alt "*") nil image-scroll-rows 1)
                ;;   (insert-image image (or alt "*")))

                (put-text-property start (point) 'image-size size)
                (when (and shr-image-animate
                           (cond ((fboundp 'image-multi-frame-p)
                                  ;; Only animate multi-frame things that specify a
                                  ;; delay; eg animated gifs as opposed to
                                  ;; multi-page tiffs.  FIXME?
                                  (cdr (image-multi-frame-p image)))
                                 ((fboundp 'image-animated-p)
                                  (image-animated-p image))))
                  (image-animate image nil 60))))
            image)
        (insert (or alt "")))))