[FR]: Allow to show content in plain text

[stkw0]

Brief description of the feature request

Hello. I recently swithced to RSS guard (and I'm liking it a lot so far) from Thunderbird and thought it would be nice to get the plain text content of articles instead of loading the whole web browser. Something similar to what Thunderbird does, that there is the option to use a Web page view or a "Summary" view and also decide if one wants the plain text, the original HTML or a simplified HTML.

Personally I find the integrated web browser overkill and it clutters the interface with a lot of buttons and the search bar that is overkill for some use cases.

[Ac314]

Did you try the Lite version?

[stkw0]

In theory I'm using the RSS Guard Lite, at least that's the name that appears in the .desktop file. In the about section I only see the next information which doesn't says anything about it.

RSS Guard

Version: 4.8.3 (built on Linux/x86_64)
Revision:
Build date: 4/7/25 1:51 PM
OS: Gentoo Linux
Qt: 6.8.3 (compiled against 6.8.3)

[martinrotter]

yes, and what exactly bothers you, "clutters interface" is way to vague, you can hide all toolbars and have really simple UI

[stkw0]

Yeah, I didn't saw the "Message viewer toolbars" option. Despite, it seems that without using webengine the text is all together (blank lines to separate paragraph seems to get removed). With webengine the text is more readable, but I was wondering if there could be an option to show the summary in plain text instead of loading the full page and skip the web rendering altogether, both for simplicity and to avoid possible security issues.

[martinrotter]

well most of feeds post their content in HTML, not in plain text

also, if you have specific issue with content formatting in lite viewer, report is as a bug (newlines removed etc)

[stkw0]

Yeah. But for example Thunderbird was able to parse the HTML in different ways. It can output the original HTML, a simplified one or totally remove HTML and convert it into plain text. That is a feature I liked about Thunderbird so I was wondering if it was something could be desirable for RSS Guard too.

[martinrotter]

Well, yes, it could be added I guess but as stated many many times my TODO list for RSS Guard is like five miles long and my time has become severely limited in last few months due to real-world stuff I have to deal with (real job which brings me income, family, some free time etc.).

[stkw0]

That's totally understandable, and knowing how much FOSS maintainers end up burn out, I would not like to put pressure on that. Just knowing it would be okay to add that is enough so in case me or anyone else gets interested, we can implement it and send a PR and so.