2021-03-26 01:02:11 (edited by dardar 2021-03-26 01:03:13)

Hello folks,

Another version has finally dropped and this one makes the program so much faster it's almost worth updating just for that alone!
Luna RSS is an accessible rss feed reader, podcatcher and RSS feed creator developed by yours truly which I've been running for a little while now.
Version 3.6 sees some major bug fixes including some fixes to the way the program actually manages and saves your feeds.
Before you update, I recommend you back up your feeds, not because I suspect there will be errors, but simply to be safe.
I've tested the feed conversion vigorously and am very happy that it's not going to leave you stranded, but better safe than sorry, right?

The full changelog is posted at the end of this post for those who care about such things, but a few highlights include:
*assign custom names to your feeds
*much, much faster start times
*cleaner html management in lists
*escape exiting many screens

The link: https://nathantech.net/products/software/lunarss.php

I did my best to cover many of the bug reports people put in to me as well as those I discovered myself, but I apologise in advance if I missed one you put in the 3.5 thread as I couldn't find it! sad sad

That being said 3.6 includes the new logger found in Calliope, so if you get start up errors Luna will now ask if you want to send me an email about it. Much cleaner than the way it logged errors before!

The full changelog:
3.6:
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where the suggests and reports screens did not show.
Bug Fix: Improved several bugs with the feed retriever.
Bug Fix: Fixed several bugs with the info table which prevented you from streaming sometimes.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug with exporting feeds.
Bug Fix: Changed how the program handled the categories.dat file to make it both smaller and faster to load.
Bug Fix: Stripped out unnecessary modules where possible.
bug Fix: Fixed a bug where alt f4 did not close the task bar icon.
Bug Fix: Volume changes now save across episodes and the closing/reopening of the program.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where unseen status did not clear.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where proper selection was not made in search result screens.
Bug Fix: All html elements are now stripped out of text displayed in feed info.
Bug Fix: Made the importer about 100 times faster and lord knows how much more stable.
Bug Fix: You can actually, you know, now use feeds that require logging in.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where descriptions sometimes did not show. While doing so, I also expanded this a little to be cleverer about finding said description.
Feature Change: Changed how the program handles URL's so that it should better able to handle https.
Feature Change: completely rewrote how the program loads and saves feeds to improve speed while starting.
Feature Change: the program now shows feed names that are being updated rather than url's.
New Feature: You can now press escape to exit many screens.
New Feature: You can now set custom names for your feeds.

Thank you for trying out Luna and as always I hope you enjoy!

Nathan Smith
Managing Director of Nathan Tech
It's not disability
It's ability!

2021-03-26 03:51:16

I was super excited. Wasn't able to make it work yet.

I downloaded the app and installed it. I use latest Jaws.

From the fresh app:
1. Go to utilities > feedly
2. Search for "magnus"
3. Press enter (or space or right-click) on "The magnus archives"
4. Choose view information
5. Focus gets lost, it's finnicky to move around. I am unable to view information.
6. Try to hit subscribe
7. Nothing seems to happen.

Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another. ― Lemony Snicket

2021-03-26 04:00:49

Hey There,

Thanks for this, I'll follow this up in the morning to see what is going on here.
In the mean time, magness is a podcast, so try searching with the Itunes one instead. smile

Nathan Smith
Managing Director of Nathan Tech
It's not disability
It's ability!

2021-03-26 04:04:29

Got it. I must say since I never found an accessible RSS feed app, I've never followed any feed, so I don't know what to look for. I feel such power in my hands waiting to be unleashed. I'll try to hunt some feeds down.

Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another. ― Lemony Snicket

2021-03-26 11:34:57

Hello there,

I  can't run Luna at all.  A  log has been recorded and emailed to your email, so hopefully you should see the problem, as I can't paste in the error myself here since it doesn't show what the error  is, just asks me whether I want to email the log to you.

If  this could be fixed, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks.

2021-03-26 16:02:50

Hey @5

Yep, I've got the log.
You could be one of two errors:
1. A start up error i'm bamboozled by.
or 2. You're missing categories.dat we shall see!

I'll let you know when i've fixed it. It's an odd one, as not everyone is getting it.

Nathan Smith
Managing Director of Nathan Tech
It's not disability
It's ability!

2021-03-26 20:32:57 (edited by defender 2021-03-26 20:45:35)

Well on one hand, the update process went pretty much flawlessly, which IMO is really impressive given how often those fail in smaller projects.
On the other though, I can't use the back button any more when in the player streaming, and escape doesn't work either, plus I still have one pretty big bug that I had hoped the update would fix but unfortunately didn't.
I also did have one feed fail in the update, the one below.
https://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/hourlynews.xml


The remaining bug I mentioned is that it seems feeds from podbeam don't update properly, at least not for me...  Sometimes it won't load the feed at all after adding it, other times you'll be really out of date with episodes.


I really appreciate the new changes though...  As you promised it's much faster to load, and the volume level saves and stream failure bugfix are already making the experience better.


By the way I have to say, seeing you on Tech Talk and Top Tech Tidbits was pretty cool!

2021-03-26 23:39:30

The program crashes immediately after opening it. I've hopefully sent you an email about the issue. I'm running Windows 10 build 19042.687 on a 2013 MacBook Air.

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.

2021-03-27 09:56:21

Hi Nathan, did you received my e-mail, I send it viaa integrated bug reporting from 3.6. For other users reference, I have following issues:

1) Some feeds were not imported correctly from 3.5 to 3.6. Thei are in the category named "error" where it is not possible to load or play

2) Export creates xml file bud ends in the <body> section and no feeds are exported.

check out my instrumental music at http://ondrosik.bandcamp.com

2021-03-27 12:39:48

Hey DarDar, what updater / installer tech do you use? I'm curious.

Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another. ― Lemony Snicket

2021-03-27 14:57:46

Just  letting  you know,  I re-installed  Luna  and it worked.

Thanks.

2021-03-27 15:03:53

hi.
the back button doesn't work

don't wish to become like the oceans, the flowers, or the sun. oceans will dry out, flowers will die, and the sun will be extinguished. be yourself and nothing and no one else and hope for a better tomorrow.

2021-03-27 15:39:12

Hello!

In order as I usually do smile
@defender:
Annoying on the back button not working, I think @12 is probably experiencing the same thing. It worked when I tested it, I mean (be a pretty big oops if it didn't, right?) but I'll see if I can trigger the bug you reference in other ways, may have to get creative with it! smile
For instance, does the bug occur from the first time you stream? Or does it work the first, but not the second? Things like that.
Thank you for the link I'll see what is going on here at my end. Do you have a sample podbeam link, as well? I vaguely remember touching on this before and apologise for the repeats, as I said in post 1 I lots the 3.5 thread (someone needs to learn how to bookmark pages, clearly)! Modern technology, I can use it!
Also, thank you! It's thanks to users I appear in such places.

@Chris
Known issue on this one my friend. I worked with three users, two by email and one over twitter and we managed to get it fixed for the installer, so if you wanted to redownload the installer and use that it will work. Alternatively, I'm working on 3.6.1 to fix a few bugs that have cropped up both in this thread, on twitter and through reports which will be out either late today or early tomorrow.

@ondrosik
I did! I meant to add a section to FAQ for this and forgot, oops.
If a feed is showing up as error and when you click on it it is saying it can't load the feed, first thing to try is to force an update of the feed from the action menu or context menu. If it still thinks it is an error and does not open the feed when you click on it, see what the status says.  Again in the context menu, click on View Status.
If there is a parsing error of some kind, usually shown in view status, that's when you email the link over and I swear at Luna until it works smile
Alternatively if the feed is opening and simply in the wrong category, click on the actions button and recategorise it. Sometimes Luna puts it in error for a good reason, such as it got a 404 when requesting the feed and wants to make you aware of it. But sometimes, Luna simply gets it wrong.

@Origine:
I actually use a small script I whipped up myself.

@vablus:
yay!

@abdullah_mohammad
I assume you're referencing the same button as in @defender's post?

Thanks for the feedback!

Nathan Smith
Managing Director of Nathan Tech
It's not disability
It's ability!

2021-03-27 16:26:42

@Dardar
Here's the 3.5 thread. I looked in your topic history.
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/3668 … available/
The back button issue is on first stream, and for reference, I'm using NVDA 2020.4 on Windows 10 20H2
I also noticed that I can't hit the save button when recategorizing a feed, it just doesn't do anything when I hit enter or space on it.
Here's a podbean link.
https://warstoriesofficial.podbean.com/feed.xml

2021-03-27 16:33:24

@defender
Many thanks! I didn't think of that. I've fixed the back button bug and am currently working on the cbc problem.

Nathan Smith
Managing Director of Nathan Tech
It's not disability
It's ability!

2021-03-27 17:24:18

Double post but:
@defender I've tested that link and it brought up an episode from March 25th. Is this the latest?

There was a bug with the user_agent of the program which I have fixed, so I'll be interested if you still experience the error once I push out the update later today.

Nathan Smith
Managing Director of Nathan Tech
It's not disability
It's ability!

2021-03-27 19:33:32

Yeah that should be the latest, but the latest one I can get through luna is Jan 14 2021 even with force refresh and readding.

2021-03-27 21:29:54

Hello!

Announcing the release of Luna RSS version 3.6.1, a bug fix release of 3.6.
Highlights include 16 bug fixes and a new experimental playback speed changer feature.

The link is still the same: https://nathantech.net/products/software/lunarss.php

Full list:
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug with subscribing to feeds through feedly.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where if a feed had an unspecified login it could sometimes break.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where if the href of the feed had changed, for instance if an http feed had moved to https, the feed would not update and break the other feeds too.
Bug Fix: Fixed where trying to share an episode of a podcast or an item on a feed would fail.
Bug Fix: Fixed where clicking back or pressing escape from the play screen could break.
Bug Fix: Fixed a problem with the format of the user_agent of the program which could cause some servers to hang when sending the feed which would then cause a timeout.
Bug Fix: Fixed exporting your feeds. Changed the message you get when doing so as well to be less hard to understand.
Bug Fix: Improved the format of the exported feeds file.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where recategorising would fail.
Bug Fix: Fixed removing a feed from your favorites.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where favorites would not save if you immediately exited after saving.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where if you requested an http feed, some servers through a tantrum and so Luna got confused. Instead there are now checks in place so if the server throws a tantrum, Luna can calm it down and send an https request instead.
Bug Fix: Fixed another bug with volume saving.
Bug Fix: Fixed tabbing in the download archive screen.
Bug Fix: Fixed where playing finished loading sound was not saving properly.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where the converter from 3.5 could get stuck if the feed did not load properly.
Documentation: updated the readme with a frequently asked questions section.
Feature Change: Changed how Luna names your files so that where ever possible, it's clear which one is which.
New Feature: You can now press control U to jump to an unseen feed.
New Feature: Added an experimental button to the play screen which allows you to choose a playing speed between very slow, slow, normal, fast and very fast.

Nathan Smith
Managing Director of Nathan Tech
It's not disability
It's ability!

2021-03-27 22:23:47 (edited by defender 2021-03-27 22:30:14)

@Dardar
Very cool!
That fixed both of my problems with feeds, and the back button problem too!

2021-03-29 14:30:47

Ooohh, neat! I'm looking forward to trying this out! That change log looks really nice, and the experimental speed changer should be fun to play with too.

To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.
William Blake - Auguries of Innocence, line 1 to 4

2021-03-30 06:29:29

Luna seems to freeze for me when trying to update my feeds to the new format. It gets to 100% and then just sits there. Killing it in the task manager and restarting it just starts the conversion all over again.

To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.
William Blake - Auguries of Innocence, line 1 to 4

2021-03-30 21:29:58

Seems that Luna is not updating my feeds. I created new database, imported podcasts from itunes. Not more than 10 podcasts. It doesn't add new episodes also force update don't work. I can reproduce this also in other machine.

check out my instrumental music at http://ondrosik.bandcamp.com

2021-03-30 23:46:52

Hi.

It'd be really cool if you could save the podcast speed for each podcast, or even globally. I think per podcast would be the best option, but can understand if this would be difficult.

2021-03-31 03:11:29

I like the speed slider, but IMO the slowest speed sounds a bit weird compared to other podcast apps I've seen.  Maybe the method could be improved?
Also, I personally know some people who would appreciate a much faster max speed setting.  I don't get it either, but they seem to get everything out of it that I do...

2021-04-03 17:19:29

This program just keeps getting better and better! Thank you so much! Here are a couple suggestions.
I'd like a way to delete downloaded podcast episodes directly from the program. Currently, I have to go into the RSS folder and manually delete the files in the downloads folder for each feed. I'd also like the ability to navigate podcasts marked with podcast chapters. I have one more question regarding streaming. Does the program save temporary cache files for streams? If so, are they automatically deleted or do I have to go somewhere and manually clear out caches?

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.