User Manual

Mimír has a number of features, and this manual should enable you to get the most out of it.

The service has two different points of interaction: the web site part, and the Jabber part. The web site allows you to set up the news channels you are interested in, configure your preferences, read your unread news and manage bookmarks. Via Jabber you get notifications of new news items, and alerts for letting you know that there is unread news waiting for you.

For each item that comes into the system, for one of the channels you selected, Mimír will look at your preferences to decide what to do with this particular item: send a notification via Jabber or mark the item as unread. By default, you will get notifications when your online presence is set to online or chat. Any other presence will result in marking the item for later reading, but this is configurable. Your list of unread items are accessable via your personal news page. This page behaves like a web-based news reader. The combination of notification via Jabber and your personal news page makes sure you don't have to miss any items.

Getting Started

After you have acquired an account, you first have to add the news bot on your Jabber list of contacts. The idea is that the bot can track your presence, so that it only sends you notifications when you want to. The bot's Jabber ID is: mimir@ik.nu and as soon as you add it to your roster, it will request a subscription to your presence. After accepting the request, the bot will start sending you notifications for new news items, as soon as they get aggregated.

Selecting Channels

The next step is to set up your own selection of channels. To do this, go to the Channels page. Since you have not logged in yet, you will be asked to identify yourself with the credentials that were given for creating the account.

Login page

The Channels page has a long list of channel titles, with a leading checkbox. At the bottom of the page, you can submit the selected channels.

Top of the Channels page.

Bottom of the Channels page.

Configuring Preferences

Optionally, you can update your preferences via the Preferences page. Most of these preferences deal with how news notifications are sent. More on that later.

Preferences page.

General preferences

Account suspended

Suspending your account will make Mimír not consider your account when new news items come in. You will not receive notifications and no items will be added to your personal news page. However, your preferences and selected channels will not be affected so that when you uncheck this preference, news processing will continue as before. You can use this when you will not be able to use this service for an extended period.

If you want to discontinue your use of this service, contact the administrator so your account can be removed.

Use personal news page

If you decide not to use the personal news page, you can uncheck this preference. Note that this will make items for which you could not be sent a notification be skipped over.

Notifications

When enabled, you will get notifications of new items, depending on your preferences below. Each news item results in one notification message. The notifications contain the channel name, the item's title, a link to the story and optionally a description (if available).

If you disable notifications, and your personal news page is enabled, all new items will be marked as unread. Basically, you will only use Mimír as a web-based news reader.

Include descriptions

If you don't want descriptions sent along in notifications, you can uncheck the this preference.

Message Type

Some Jabber clients support the headline message type. When implemented correctly it will render the link to the story as a nice button you can click to have your browser load the linked page. However, many clients do not support this (correctly). So by default, you will receive messages of the chat message type. These messages look just like the bot is chatting with you. The link URL is then sent as text, but some clients detect URLs, and make them clickable.

Notify for presences

This preference lets you select the presences for which you want to receive notifications. If your current presence is not included in that selection, and your personal news page is enabled, new news items will be marked as unread.

Note that if you select the offline presence, the notifications will queue up in offline storage by your Jabber server, and these will be sent to you as soon as you log in. If you subscribe to many channels, this may not be desirable.

Use https

If your presence changes from one of the unselected to one of the selected notification presences (see above), and new news items where marked as unread, you will get a message that reminds you of those items, with a link to your personal news page.

With this preference, you can select whether that link points to the normal, unencrypted news page (via http) or if it uses SSL for this page (via https).

Password change

If you want to change your password, put in your new password twice. If you leave the fields empty, your password will not be changed.

Receiving Notifications

As described above, you will only receive messages from Mimír when your presence matches one of the selected notification presences. The news bot does not respond to messages sent to it. If you do not want to be disturbed, you can alter your presence, or send directed presence to the bot if your client supports that. You can also (temporarily) disable notifications in your prefences. A notification looks similar to the screenshot below.

News item notification (via Jabber).

Your Personal News Page

The personal News page contains all items that have been marked as unread. That is, all new news items that were acquired by the system (for your selected channels) while you could not be sent notifications, according to your preferences:

News page.

In the screenshot above, a number of things can be seen. There are two news items, in two different channels, all with checkboxes and triangles in front of them. On the left a set of controls, and finally a number of buttons at the bottom.

Collapsing Items and Channels

The news page is divided into channel blocks. Each of these blocks have the channel's title at the top, and can be collapsed or expanded. The triangle in front of the channel title indicates the state (downwards is expanded, rightwards is collapsed). Clicking on the triangle icon toggles the state. By default, all channels are expanded so that you can see the items it holds.

Each news item at least has a title that is linked to the item's story. When available, there is also a description of the item (usually a summary, but for many blogs the complete text). When present, the item's title is prefixed with a similar triangle icon as for the channels, but the default here is collapsed (like the item on Gajim). To see the descriptions of the items, you need to click the icon (as done for the Slashdot article in the screenshot).

On the left, in the Controls section, there are links for expanding or collapsing all items or channels at once.

Marking Items as Read

The checkboxes in front of each item indicates whether you want to mark the item as read. Submitting the form, by clicking the Mark as read button, removes the checked items from your news page. By default, all items are checked. You can check or uncheck each item individually, by group (using the checkbox in front of the channel title) or all at once (using the bottom buttons, or the controls on the left).

Overview

When you subscribe to a large number of channels, or you have accumulated a large number of unread items, the news overview page may come in handy. It lists all channels for which there are unread items, followed by the number of unread items. The number links to a page of unread items for that particular channel only. The items are now grouped by date, which makes it easier to check or uncheck a collection of items.

Bookmarks

Mimír also has a bookmarking facility. The Bookmarks page is similar to the News page, but is populated manually on the News page. The idea is that, although you read an item, you might want to keep it for later reading, without having it in your normal News page. When the mouse pointer hovers above an item's title, a small Add to bookmarks link appears. Clicking it will add the item to your bookmarks.

You can remove the items there by checking the checkbox in front of the items, and submitting the form. Unlike the News page, the items on the Bookmarks are unchecked by default.

Miscellaneous Remarks