Introduction

Pan Reader is intended to be a cross-platform, open-source feed reader. I'm bored with feed readers which assume that you're going to be reading all your news all at once. When I'm reading feeds, I always first check up on my friends (reading whatever they've written in detail), then work my way down to the more boring blogs, looking out for posts which catch my attention. None of the current feed readers work the way I want them to, so I'm just going to go out there and write my own.

How I'm going to write it

The plan is to figure out what constitutes a feed reader I can use. We'll write the feed reader in WxWidgets in Perl, clobbering together the best of CPAN to make something functional quickly. Once we have something basic, we can play around with interfaces, layouts, and ideas to make something useable.

Once we know what we're looking for, we'll take another look around and see what would be best to do. The most logical route would be to re-write (ugh!) Pan in C++/WxWidgets, so that we get essentially the same application, but at native speeds and without additional libraries. This would be the "Firefox route".

Alternatively, we could hitchhike onto other programs. My current vague impression of what Pan will look like looks an awful lot like Gaim, so maybe we could just make a Gaim plugin. Or a Firefox toolbar. Or something.

How you can help

Jump in! Get the source through your favourite Subversion client, look around for TODOs, fill them in, and mail me a patch (gaurav_ggvaidya_com, you know the drill). Or work on your own thing which fits in somehow. Or just steal the code and go out there and change the world!