Xfce4-panel RSS Plugin.

A simple Xfce4-panel plugin for reading RSS, and notifying on new unread content. The plugin is written with Rust, except for the seven or so lines of C necessary in order to make XFCE_PANEL_PLUGIN_REGISTER work.

Installation:

Prerequisites:

Installing from a fresh Xubuntu in a VirtualBox leads to these prerequisites, before the plugin could be built and installed from source:

0. Xfce libraries:

• apt install libxfce4panel-2.0 libxfce4ui-common libxfce4ui-2-0

1. GCC:

• apt install gcc

2. Rust/Cargo:

• curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh

3. OpenSSL for the RSS crate:

• apt install pkg-config libssl-dev

4. Gtk for the gtk-rs crate:

• apt install libgtk-3-dev

Installing the plugin

Run cargo build --release to make sure everything is installed properly.

cargo build --release  # building the rust parts
./make.sh              # creating the plugin librssplugin.so file 
sudo ./install.sh      # moving the .so, .desktop, and .svg files, clear icon cache.
xfce4-panel -r         # restart the panel.

The RSS Plugin should now be available to add.

Known problems:

• A fresh Xubuntu install has no /usr/lib/xfce4/panel-plugins/-folder. If this is the case for you, run mkdir -p /usr/lib/xfce4/panel-plugins.
• On the same Xubuntu install as above, the icon cache was not cleared. This resulted in no icon on the add-menu and about dialog, but otherwise has no effect. The icon in the panel is based on svg as a string within the code.

Future:

• Visually pleasing item-view
• Configurable item-view, icons and colors
• Better, more idiomatic, rust.
• Remove last dependency of C

Credit:

Using:

• Rust
• Gtk-rs
• Xfce4-panel
• RS's RSS
• Reqwest
• Shrinkwraprs

Inspired by:

• The Xfce4 Sample Plugin and the accompanying how-to guide for panel plugins
• gDiceRoller and the accompanying tutorial on GTK with rust
• Shrinkwrapping and Message Passing, as suggested by Best Practices With GTK + Rust

For everything else:

• Feel free to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee