How I use Offpunk (by Ploum)
My offpunk is offline by default. The config file contains one line :
offline
A tour every morning
Each morning, while water for my tea is boiling, I launch a full synchronisation of Offpunk. This synchronisation is done through a bash script called "do_the_internet.sh". The offpunk line contains the following:
offpunk --sync --assume-yes --cache-validity 51840
The "--assume-yes" insures I accept new SSL certificates. The cache validity is arbitrarly set around 15 hours which means that it will almost never do a full refresh twice a day but I will not miss a day if, for one reason, I was late yesterday but I’m really early this morning.
Once this is done, I can browse through all the news from my subscribed RSS through "tour":
t
When I see an article that looks interesting to read and is a bit too long to read right now (remember, I’m sipping tea), I add it to my "toread" list.
add toread
At the end of my tour, I go to this list to read whatever I feel reading right now.
list toread
X
(where X is a number in the list)
After reading, I archive it.
archive
If the content is truncated, I ask to see the full version.
v full
I may need to see the page in Firefox.
open url
If I know that a given link will need to be open in Firefox, I do it directly.
open url X
(where X is the number of the link)
I may also check first where the link is heading with.
v X
(where X is the number of the link)
If it looks interesting, I add it to my tour:
t X
Then I get back reading the article with
v
Sometimes, I follow links and find new stuff to read that I also put in my "toread" list. If the author look interesting, I try to see what else (s)he wrote by immediately going to her/his RSS feed.
v feed
How, that feed looks interesting. Let’s subscribe by putting it in my RSS subscriptions:
add rss
"rss" is a list I created with the following:
list create rss
list subscribe rss
Alternatively, you could simply put it in your "subscribed" list. (mine is dedicated to gemlogs only).
From time to time, I try to organize my subscription by grouping them into section in my list with
list edit rss
I can also remove some older no longer updated feeds. Another alternative is simply to archive them by doing
list rss
X
(where X is the number of the feed)
archive
Other news
There are a few pages I want to regularly visit which don’t have a feed. Or feeds for which I don’t want each item to clutter my tour. For those, I’ve created a list called "news".
list create news
I didn’t subscribe to that list. It is a simple list. If the news are low and I still have cup in my tea, I browse the whole list with:
tour news
t
Some RSS/Atom feeds don’t point to content but contain their own content. To access the whole content, simply ask for the full version of the feed.
v full
Once in full mode, I add the feed to my news list.
add news
It means I can browse regularly that feed (but no content will be pushed into my tour).
Remembering
Sometimes, I want to remember a page to use it in a project. When this happen, I create a list for that project.
list create offpunk
But I don’t want the content of the links there to be updated, ever. I want to preserve the content! So I freeze the list.
list freeze offpunk
When something in my "toread" list should be kept for a given project, I move it there.
move offpunk
I use "move" and not "add". Else the link would stay in both "toread" and "offpunk", which is not what I want.
Reading later from outside source
Often, I’m forced to use Firefox. But I prefer reading articles in Offpunk. To do that, I simply copy the URL of the page in my clipboard (or the URL received through an email) then, in a terminal, I type:
toread
Toread is a zsh alias to the following :
offpunk --fetch-later `wl-paste -p`
(I use Wayland. If you use X, replace wl-paste by xclip or xsel)
Now, the URL is in my list to_fetch and will be fetched next morning.
If Offpunk is already open, I simply type:
go
(by default, "go" will use the content of the clipboard)
If I don’t want to wait til tomorrow, I run a "short sync" which is the following:
offpunk --sync tour to_fetch --assume-yes --cache-validity 51840
This means that offpunk will only tries to sync the content of lists "tour" and "to_fetch". It will thus ignore "rss", "subscribed" and "news".
Finding what you’ve read
Sometimes, I want to go back to what I’ve just read today or a few days ago. If it’s very recent, I use history:
history
If a bit older, I browse the archives.
list archives
The archives are limited to 200 (this is configurable). For me, it means between 1 and 2 months of reading. If I really want to find something I’ve read months ago, I use "grep" in the "~/.cache/offpunk" folder. It is rare but… it worked several times.
Outside of Offpunk
Inside my terminal, I now open files with:
opnk