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Newsboat RSS reader acting weird


Hi there! Any Newsboat users here? I'm trying to force myself to learn how to use the Terminal, and Newsboat is the first app I installed... But there's a command that doesn't seem to work... Hitting Shift + E is supposed to open the urls file in a text editor, but nothing happens... As I'm very new to all of this, I have no idea what I should be looking for in order to fix this... Any ideas please? I'm on an Ubuntu based machine... Thank you in advance. Cheers!


Posted in: s/Linux

😺 Nono

2023-11-04 · 6 months ago


10 Comments ↓


👤 jdcard · 2023-11-05 at 01:59:

From the Newsboat man page: "edit-urls (default key: Shift + E) -- Edit the list of subscribed URLs. Newsboat will start the editor configured through the VISUAL environment variable (if unset, EDITOR is used; fallback: vi). When editing is finished, Newsboat will reload the URLs file." Have you set your default editor? In your .bashrc file "EXPORT EDITOR=nano", or what ever is appropriate for your system.


😺 Nono [OP] · 2023-11-05 at 08:12:

Hi @jdcard: When I quit Newsboat, I did notice the following error message in the shell:

"sh: 1: vi: not found"

However, in your response, you mention a file named .bashrc. I'm using the Fish shell because it is said to be friendly to beginners. Will your response work if I'm not on Bash?

I know I should just try it and see what it does, but I'm afraid I'll break it all... That's why I'm asking for more info first... Thanks!


😺 Nono [OP] · 2023-11-05 at 08:15:

@clseibold: Heheheee... So true! ^^


😺 Nono [OP] · 2023-11-05 at 09:11:

Hi @clseibold: I use Micro as a text editor... I'll explore the documentation for Fish, but I don't understand what "environment" means in this context... Is it just a generic name for a text editor? Thanks, and sorry if this all sounds a little trivial!


🍵 michaelnordmeyer · 2023-11-05 at 11:17:

Environment means in this case the shell evaluation configuration. I never tried Fish, but other shells display theirs when executing `env` in the shell. Apparently Fish uses `set -gx`.


`set -gx EDITOR micro` should set the default editor to Micro permanently and apply it immediately to your current shell environment. Other opened Fish shells have to either source the config again (~/.config/fish/config.fish) or to be restarted. Apps relying on the EDITOR variable might have to be restarted as well to apply the new setting.


— https://fishshell.com/docs/current/cmds/set.html

— https://fishshell.com/docs/current/cmds/source.html


👤 AnoikisNomads · 2023-11-05 at 11:53:

@nono environment in this content just means setting up default... like which program to use to open URLs, Mails, or in this content, config files.


😺 Nono [OP] · 2023-11-05 at 12:21:

Thank you guys for all the help!

I have to admit, I didn't understand all of what was written in the links to the documentation for Fish, but with the answers provided here, it does work now, even after restarting! Thanks again!


😺 Nono [OP] · 2023-11-06 at 00:08:

@clseibold: Very clear and informative! Thank you very much!


🍭 jmjl · 2023-11-06 at 17:44:

They have to be restarted but with the new enviroment loaded, as most programs usually don't try to detect the shell you're using and set a inotify to add new enviroment variables, so new variables won't apply, (unless you go weird routes like adding the variable into environ manually to each process)


— I'm replying to this comment specifically, and bubble doesn't make that clear.


😺 Nono [OP] · 2023-11-06 at 18:29:

@jmjl: I just specified it in the right config file, and now it works fine

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