NotQuiteRSS status and future

[birdie-github]

NotQuiteRSS (thanks to ChatGPT 6 Astra):

Already completed

• Transforms into a pure Qt5 application.
• Removes browser behavior, browser tabs/navigation/preferences and ad blocking.
• Replaces QtWebKit with QTextBrowser/QTextDocument (articles can still be read in the app!).
• Articles display sanitized feed-provided content; web links open externally.
• Retains reader tabs, newspaper mode, search within articles, selection/copy, zoom, printing/export, and article actions.
• Implements controlled image fetching, TLS certificate verification, supported-format negotiation and optional image diagnostics.
• Requires installed Qt5 QtSingleApplication instead of the bundled copy.
• Updates Linux CI to use a Fedora 44 container and packaged dependencies.
• Updates Windows CI to actually make it work.
• Removes the bundled 3rdparty/qtsingleapplication directory.
• Drops the 3rdparty/sqlite directory, without changing its build rules.
• Fixes Windows and MacOS builds (now that we've dropped built-in SQLite)
• Removes FTP support and drops 3rdparty/qftp.
• Replaces QzRegExp uses with QRegularExpression/QRegularExpressionMatch, and drops 3rdparty/qupzilla.
• Applies certain functional patches past version 0.19.4.
• Sharing methods are now dynamic and moved to an ini file, social-networks.ini.
• Adds Link Time Optimization (LTO) by default for all targets.
• All compilation warnings fixed.
• Feeds database (feeds.db) is now properly cleaned up on exit and respects your article retention settings.
• Fixes unintended in-memory database saves when moving to tray.

The current commit is 100% usable. No tags or releases yet, the work is not complete.

Remaining tasks

• Full Qt6 compatibility.
• Attend to bug reports from the former bug tracker (of which I have a couple - I specially hate that the cleanup feature of this app has never worked - my feeds DB is growing uncontrollably despite the 7-day retention period - I rebuild it every now and then).

Fix sheer code madness, e.g.

Priority	Area	Problem	Recommended treatment
Immediate	Restore language support	Removing the .qm files did not remove language support from the application. OptionsDialog::createLanguageWidget() still hard-codes about 32 languages across roughly 290 lines; translators, language settings, RTL switching and 32 flag resources remain.	Remove the language page, translator objects, language state, flag assets and language-specific branches. The earlier qmake/CI cleanup was correct but incomplete at runtime. My own remark: properly restore language support instead - I dropped it because it meant countless wasted tokens for every task
High	Settings	About 214 settings reads have defaults scattered throughout the source. Settings wraps one global QSettings, and every wrapper constructor/destructor forcibly closes an outstanding group belonging to any other caller.	Introduce typed settings sections incrementally. Stop sharing mutable group state before moving defaults into files. Author's note: what about the X-Macro pattern? Or the Q_PROPERTY + MetaObject approach with introspection?
High	MainWindow	Approximately 7,800 lines, 185 methods and hundreds of public widget/action members. Other classes routinely reach through mainApp->mainWindow() to change internal state.	Extract bounded components: sharing, action registry, settings application, tray/notifications and feed commands. Avoid a wholesale rewrite.
High	Feed parsing	Atom and RSS parse differently, but then duplicate old-item checks, duplicate detection and database insertion.	Normalize both into one feed/article structure, then use one persistence path. Preserve the differing RSS duplicate rules deliberately.
High	Database commands	UI objects construct raw SQL strings and send them across a signal to UpdateObject::slotSqlQueryExec(). Many transactions and queries ignore failure.	Replace the raw-SQL signal with typed operations and prepared queries. Add rollback and error propagation where transactions protect multi-step updates.
Medium	OPML importer	Parsing, encoding repair, hierarchy construction and database writes share one function. It commits partial results even after an XML parsing error.	Parse into an in-memory tree first, validate it, then import in one transaction and roll back on failure.
Medium	Article/newspaper rendering	NewsTabWidget constructs large HTML fragments inline, with substantial duplication between layouts and inconsistent escaping.	Extract an ArticleRenderer with small escaped helpers and a single article view model.
Mechanical	Qt modernization	There are still roughly 726 old SIGNAL()/SLOT() occurrences, 75 foreach uses, 46 NULLs and many C-style casts.	Convert these in narrow patches after the relevant classes have been separated; otherwise much of the churn will later be rewritten again.

[c-prompt]

Glad to see you're working on this. I've been thinking about moving away from QuiteRSS for years. While I don't fault them, the best alternative still hasn't considered it a priority feature to mark every article in a feed as read when moving to a different feed. As QuiteRSS can't play reddit's often-used HLSPlaylist.m3u8 videos natively in the browser window, I was just probing AI last week how difficult it would be to limit build changes to just making HLSPlaylist.m3u8 work. Like you, I discovered the code wasn't in a state that would make it quick and easy so gave up.

Also, your comment about the cleanup function not working made me smile. Years ago, I wrote a script to update the SQLite directly to deal with this.

[birdie-github]

Wait, that's not enough, please also provide this:

grep -HE '^(cleanupOnShutdown|maxDayClearUp|maxNewsClearUp|dayClearUpOn|newsClearUpOn|readCleanUp|neverUnreadClearUp|neverStarClearUp|neverLabelClearUp|cleanUpDeleted|optimizeDB)=' ~/.config/QuiteRss/*.ini

[c-prompt]

Wait, that's not enough, please also provide this:

grep -HE '^(cleanupOnShutdown|maxDayClearUp|maxNewsClearUp|dayClearUpOn|newsClearUpOn|readCleanUp|neverUnreadClearUp|neverStarClearUp|neverLabelClearUp|cleanUpDeleted|optimizeDB)=' ~/.config/QuiteRss/*.ini

Only if I don't have to install a new terminal...

grep -HE '^(cleanupOnShutdown|maxDayClearUp|maxNewsClearUp|dayClearUpOn|newsClearUpOn|readCleanUp|neverUnreadClearUp|neverStarClearUp|neverLabelClearUp|cleanUpDeleted|optimizeDB)=' ~/.config/QuiteRss/*.ini
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:cleanUpDeleted=true
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:dayClearUpOn=false
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:maxDayClearUp=30
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:maxNewsClearUp=200
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:neverLabelClearUp=false
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:neverStarClearUp=false
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:neverUnreadClearUp=false
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:newsClearUpOn=false
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:cleanUpDeleted=false
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:cleanupOnShutdown=true
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:dayClearUpOn=true
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:maxDayClearUp=30
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:maxNewsClearUp=200
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:neverLabelClearUp=true
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:neverStarClearUp=true
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:neverUnreadClearUp=true
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:newsClearUpOn=true
/home/user_2/.config/QuiteRss/QuiteRss.ini:optimizeDB=false

[birdie-github]

I've fixed the bug with the DB growing up indefinitely and not being cleaned up on exit properly. The patch/commit should apply cleanly to the original QuiteRSS, or you can use my fork which still could use a LOT more testing.

[Denver-22]

I've fixed the bug

We're waiting for the Windows build.

[birdie-github]

@Denver-22 It's right there, I've just uploaded it.

[jimgreen2013]

Looking forward to Qt6 compatibility, once it's done, I'd love to test it on my computer.

[Denver-22]

@birdie-github
Maybe you should think about the fork's name some more? Using "not" in the name isn't very optimistic/positive either...

Thank you for your detailed answer about the database. I hope I'm happy with the results. Good luck with your plans!

[birdie-github]

Version 0.90.2 with full Qt6 support is ready.

Then perhaps there's hope reddit videos will finally play properly.

That's a long way off. First, I want to finish polishing the app. The reason no one has tried to actually fork and continue its development is because how rough it is.

I'm changing the internal name from QuiteRSS to NotQuiteRSS.

Damn that's funny.

Yeah, I thought so, "not quite" sounds amusing.

[birdie-github]

@birdie-github Maybe you should think about the fork's name some more? Using "not" in the name isn't very optimistic/positive either...

"Not quite" at least to my ear sounds funny :-) I know I know that generally "Not" should be avoided but it's not just "not" in this case ;-)

Thank you for your detailed answer about the database. I hope I'm happy with the results. Good luck with your plans!

You're welcome.

[Denver-22]

"Not quite" - That's why ))). My English didn't allow me to see the humor )).

[Denver-22]

if the site is no longer accessible, I could still read the old pages directly in QuiteRss

I found this site in my RSS feed. Your build correctly saved the page to feeds.db after the garbage collection. I'm thrilled with how much the file has shrunk (more than 2 times)!

[Denver-22]

I also fixed a long-standing bug that caused the app to dump its database to the disk when it was closed and moved to the systray. I do it dozens of times a day.

I always thought that saving the database when hiding in the tray was a feature))).
Since you "fixed" it, does feeds.db now only update when the program closes? If so, are there any plans to add a forced save command (Save button)? My program doesn't close for days. I wouldn't want to lose the current state if the program or Windows crashes.

[birdie-github]

Options -> General -> Store a DB in memory
                      Save DB stored in memory to file every NNN minutes.

Mine is set to 720 minutes or 12 hours. Change it to what you want. You can disable the feature altogether, then all updates will hit your disk immediately.