It's simple because it doesn't actually interact with Hacker News. It uses a HTTP API to get the data.
Version 0.4.0 of the hackernews package is able to fetch stories
from six different Hacker News feeds, namely top, new, best, ask, show
and job stories. The default feed is top stories, which corresponds to
the Hacker News homepage.
The score, title, and comments count of each story is presented on a line of its own (see screenshot below), though this format is customizable. Both the title and comments count strings are hyperlinked to the Hacker News page for the item (the one with the comments), unless the story links to an external page, in which case the title is hyperlinked to that instead.
Clicking or typing RET on a link opens it with the command
browse-url,
which selects a browser based on the user option
browse-url-browser-function. This defaults to the system's default
browser.
Typing t on a link first tries to open it in
eww,
if available, and otherwise passes it to the command
browse-url-text-emacs, which consults the user option
browse-url-text-browser. This defaults to running lynx within
Emacs. Keep in mind that some websites do not render well in text
mode.
A future hackernews version may support upvoting and interacting
with comments.
| Keybinding | Description |
|---|---|
| RET | Open link in default (external) browser |
| t | Open link in text-mode browser within Emacs |
| n | Move to next title link |
| p | Move to previous title link |
| TAB | Move to next comments count link |
| S-TAB | Move to previous comments count link |
| m | Load more stories |
| g | Reload stories |
| f | Prompt user for a feed to switch to |
| q | Quit |
All feed re/loading commands accept an optional numeric prefix
argument
denoting how many stories to act on. For example, M-5 0 g refreshes
the feed of the current hackernews buffer and fetches its top 50
stories. With no prefix argument, the value of the user option
hackernews-items-per-page is used instead.
Those who like the built-in package manager package.el need only
point it to the Marmalade repository, which can be achieved by adding
the following code to your user-init-file:
(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
'("marmalade" .
"http://marmalade-repo.org/packages/"))
(package-initialize)Then you can run M-x package-install RET hackernews RET.
Place the hackernews.el file into a directory on your load-path
and add the following code to your user-init-file:
(autoload 'hackernews "hackernews" nil t)Alternatively, if you always want the package loaded at startup (this slows down startup):
(require 'hackernews)Just run M-x hackernews RET. This reads the feed specified by the
user option hackernews-default-feed, which defaults to top stories,
i.e. the Hacker News homepage. A direct command for each supported
feed is also supported, e.g. M-x hackernews-top-stories RET or M-x hackernews-ask-stories RET. These direct commands are not autoloaded,
however, so to use them before hackernews has been loaded you should
autoload them yourself, e.g. by adding the following to your
user-init-file:
(autoload 'hackernews-ask-stories "hackernews" nil t)You can list and modify all custom faces and variables by typing M-x customize-group RET hackernews RET.
Copyright (C) 2012-2017 Lincoln de Sousa lincoln@comum.org
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
