Woodwind

Woodwind is a minimalist open source indie reader by Kyle Mahan.

• There was an instance running at https://woodwind.xyz/ (offline since 2018-02-06, domain abanded)

Site Offline 2018-02-06

Site now in another language as of 2018-04-23

• Source code is on GitHub

Features

• Support for h-feed and xml feeds
• Login with IndieAuth
• Post responses (likes, replies etc.) via different configurable mechanisms:
  • Micropub: likes and replies are posted directly to the user's site with minimal clicking.
  • indie-config: supply indie-actions for each entry, use javascript to configure the endpoints using web+action handler.
  • Configurable action URLs: configure actions and action urls in the user settings page. This is like indie-config but the configuration is stored in Woodwind instead of your web+action handler.
• Stream-style, avoid feeling like checking email (constantly marking things as read and unread).
• Low maintenance. I'm trying to keep the core code under ~500 lines, moving reusable pieces to libraries or flask extensions (e.g., https://github.com/kylewm/flask-micropub)
  • Well I still think this was a noble goal but I blew past it. LOC is closer to 1000 now.
• Reply context for in-reply-tos h-entrys and tweets (via twitter-activitystreams and a special Twitter user @woodwind_reader that doesn't have access to anyone's private feeds)
• Embed instagram photos, youtube, and vimeo content when text includes a link and no other embedded content.
• Supports subscribing to Pubsubhubbub feeds (h-feed and xml)
• Websockets-based live updates using a Node.js proxy almost exactly copied from http://aaronparecki.com/articles/2013/10/13/1/realtime-indieweb-comments, thanks for documenting Aaron Parecki!!
  • Probably need to improve the UI to hide updates behind a "# new posts" link like twitter.
• http request caching[1]

Configuration for Known

Those who'd like to quickly set up the Configurable Action URLs for use with Known can cut/paste the following:

• Share http://www.yoursitenamehere.com/share?share_url={url}&share_title=&share_type=note
• Reply http://www.yoursitenamehere.com/share?share_url={url}&share_title=&share_type=reply
• Bookmark http://www.yoursitenamehere.com/share?share_url={url}&share_title=&share_type=bookmark
• Like http://www.yoursitenamehere.com/share?share_url={url}&share_title=&share_type=like
• Repost http://www.yoursitenamehere.com/share?share_url={url}&share_title=&share_type=repost

One need only to replace `www.yoursitenamehere.com` with their appropriate site URL.

Note that for using the "like" and "repost" functionality, one will need the KnownReactions plugin and that without it, these buttons won't function properly on your installation.

Itches

• Feeds that are successfully subscribed via PuSH and have received at least one update ping should be polled at a lower rate, 1x/day probably.
• Show "liked" status if a post has been previously liked
  • remember successful likes posted through woodwind, and poll the user's unfiltered h-feed to pick up the rest
  • alternative proposal: parse p-like on the target permalink. (This would not be good enough for the feeds I subscribe to... legacy xml feeds, proxied twitter stream, sites that do not publish comments like tantek.com, sites that pull in comments from an external service via javascript)
• Support "unlike" a status that has been previously liked
• Aggregate posts by the same author within some temporal window (probably by day)
• Cluster simple posts (e.g. "like" posts on tantek.com)
• Quick access to {facebook,twitter,instagram}-activitystreams.appspot.com to make it easy to subscribe to social network feeds.

Name

A bad pun... woodwinds are "reed" instruments.

Screenshots

Aggregate stream

User-specific settings

See Also

• reader
• Red Wind
• Marty McGuire post on Self-Hosting kylewm's Woodwind Indie Reader
• Marty McGuire post on Configuring Woodwind with imageproxy