ffetch

What is ffetch?

Ffetch retrieves new messages from phpBB web forums, RSS feeds, or USENET news, and stores them to a local hard disk in a format that most mail user agents are able to read. This will let you read messages from several different sources in your mail client.

Because of a modular design it's easy to add new plugins for downloading another kinds of content, or define new storare formats.

Why would I use ffetch?

• No need to check every forum separately - all messages are retrieved by a single command.
• Faster reading - no lag in retrieving one thread at a time caused by a heavy-loaded server because messages are on your hard drive.
• Familiar user interface - you can use your favourite mail reader instead of dozens of divergent user interfaces in web forums.
• Unlike many webboards, most mail readers have advanced filtering and searching capabilities.
• Messages can be archived locally.

Prerequisites

• Python 2.3 or later (at http://www.python.org)
• libxml2 (with Python bindings) (at http://xmlsoft.org/)
• Universal feedparser (at http://sourceforge.net/projects/feedparser/)

On Debian, these requirements are satisfied by installing 'python', 'python-libxml2', and 'python-feedparser' packages.

Obtaining ffetch

Download the latest version here. Just untar the package, no installation is required.

Read README file to get more information about configuration.

The Sourceforge project page contains addresses of mailing lists and the bug tracker.