Pears

Intro

Pears is a quite simple and straightforward program and has tooltips and hints everywhere, so it should be quite easy to use.

Here's the very quick user's guide:
  • right-click on a feed to update it; use F5 to update all
  • right-click on an item to toggle its read/unread status
  • browse through the menus for more options
  • the status bar is your friend: plenty of help there for all functions

In the spirit of good software practice I've decided to provide a more extended guide too, for the insecure individuals out there smile. Even if you don't have any feeds at the moment, you can look at the default Project 5 feed that comes with Pears. It contains a Welcome topic which gives you a quick how-to as well. Note that my feed is not bolted in there, you can delete it if you don't like and it won't come back if you update Pears (it only appears if there is no stored feeds file is available).

Starting

You can run Pears by double-clicking on pears.py in the directory where you put Pears or by running it from your console, using python pears.py. Windows users might find it easier to run Pears for Windows.bat rather than pears.py, as this one avoids a console being shown while Pears is running.
If the program does not start when you perform these steps, you have most likely not installed a proper Python and/or wxPython version.

As already mentioned in the index, Pears does not pollute your system by default. If you want to add it to your Start menu (under Windows), proceed as follows (don't worry, it's really easy, I just give you lots of steps so even the newbiest newbie can get it right smile and if you know this one, it will help you in other situations as well):

  1. Open the folder where you installed Pears in Explorer.
  2. Right-click on Pears for Windows.bat and keep the right mouse button pressed.
  3. Now, with the button still pressed, drag the file to your Start button and release it.
  4. Click on the Start button and look for Pears for Windows; right-click on it and choose Properties from the popup menu
  5. Under the tab Shortcut, copy the text in the Target field to clipboard, then click on the Other icon button. You will get a warning, ignore it.
  6. Paste in the entry field the contents of the clipboard. It should now read: <Directory where you installed Pears>\Pears for Windows.bat Replace Pears for Windows.bat in there with pearssmall.ico. You should now see the icon.
  7. Click on OK to close the dialog and click OK in the next dialog too. Done! You can start Pears from the Start menu.

Linux users should figure it out on their own, there are too many systems out there and I don't know enough about Linux to provide useful information on the matter.

Feeds

The Feeds menu in Pears contains facilities for managing your newsfeeds. Adding a feed is of course possible by choosing the Add... menu item, but also by drag-and-dropping a link from your browser on the Pears window. You will be presented with a dialog box where you can specify the location of the feed (its URL in other words). If the location you specify seems to be valid (the feed is not already in the feeds list and it's a non-empty location), the Get button will be enabled. Click on it to make Pears get the feed info for you.

If all goes well, a feed description and possibly other properties will appear in the window and the Add button will be enabled. You can modify the feed's title and cache size, but you're not allowed to change the location at this point. When you're done, click on the Add button and your feed will be added to the list (but not downloaded).

You can modify your feed options at any time by using the Show properties... menu item.

Other options in the Feeds menu include updating, deleting and emptying feeds.

Feeds and their contents are stored in the home directory of the current user, so each user can have his or her own feeds.

Reading

To read the topics in a new feed, you'll first have to Update that feed. You can do this from the Feeds menu or by right-clicking on that particular feed. It is also possible to update all feeds at once by pressing F5. Downloaded items are cached (saved on disk), so that you do not have to be online to read the topics. If the cache size you specified for a certain feed is exceeded, the last items in that feed will be deleted when you shut down the program. Topics which will be deleted are by default green and feeds which contain green topics are also green.

The feeds list displays the number of new items (topics) and the total number of topics in a certain feed. Feeds which contain new items are displayed bold by default, in order to make them easily recognizable. You can display the topics in a feed by left-clicking on the feedname. The topics are then listed in the right upper pane. You can then click on a topic to make it appear in the bottom right pane.

Topics inside a feed can be manipulated in all sorts of ways too: you can mark them read/unread, delete them or copy them partly or entirely to clipboard. All these actions are shown in the Topics menu. Note that Pears automatically marks topics as read after they've been open for a certain amount of time. You can also toggle between read and unread by right-clicking on a topic.

Options

Pears is open source, so you can modify it all you like. But for the non-programmers out there, I've also provided a couple of options to make Pears act more like you want it to, which are available from the Options menu. Note that the options, like the feeds, are stored in the current user's home directory. What you prefer will only be valid for yourself.

Statistics

The program keeps track of a number of statistics (again, on a per-user basis). You can see them in the About screen.
© 2003, 2004 Project 5