How Do I?

Below are some of the more common questions asked about Vienna while it was being pre-release tested. See the Official Vienna FAQ Page for these and the latest hints and tips for using Vienna.

- Where do I get the Vienna source code?
- I found a problem with Vienna. How do I report it?
- How do I create my own styles?
- How do I create my own scripts?
- How can I see what happened when my subscriptions are refreshed?
- How do I move my Vienna database to another folder?
- One of my subscriptions reports "Error parsing XML data in feed". What does this mean?
- Is there a shortcut key for going to the next article, marking read, etc?
- How do I use Auto Expire and what does it do?
- How do I request an enhancement in Vienna?

## Where do I get the Vienna source code?

See the Development page for instructions for getting the source code for Vienna. The source code is freely available if you're interested in learning how Vienna works, if you want to build your own copy of Vienna from scratch on your own machine or if you want to borrow portions for inclusion in your own project. The source is provided under the Apache 2.0 license.

## I found a problem with Vienna. How do I report it?

Post a message over in the Support forum and somebody will investigate. Provide as much information about the problem as you can including: the build of Vienna (obtained from the About Vienna panel), repro steps and what you expected to happen.

Make sure you're always running the most recent build of Vienna. The Check for Updates command will report if there's a newer build available than the one you have.

Fixes for bugs take priority over new features so if your problem is confirmed to be a bug with high impact and no simple workaround then I'll look at making a fix available as soon as reasonably possible.

## How do I create my own styles?

See the Custom Styles page for instructions.

## How do I create my own scripts?

Vienna's scripts are written using AppleScript. See the Apple resource page for more details.

One way to get started is to download one of the existing scripts from the Vienna Downloads page and view it in the AppleScript editor. Also take a look at the Scripts page for more details of the Vienna scripting dictionary and examples of what you can accomplish.

To submit your own script, send it to steve@opencommunity.co.uk and after it has been reviewed, it will be made available on the Downloads page.

## How can I see what happened when my subscriptions are refreshed?

Open the Activity Window from the Window menu. The activity window shows all subscriptions and the status of the last time they were refreshed in that session. The bottom of the activity window shows more details include the HTTP headers and may be useful for debugging. (If the details pane is not visible, grab the split bar at the bottom of the Activity Window and drag it up to uncover the pane).

## How do I move my Vienna database to another folder?

By default, your Vienna database is the messages.db file which is located at ~/Library/Application Support/Vienna. You can move this to another folder if you wish. The following steps show how:

1. Shut down Vienna.
2. Open a console window and enter:
   defaults write uk.co.opencommunity.vienna2 "DefaultDatabase" '<path to new messages.db>'
   where <path to new messages.db> is the name of the folder that contains the messages.db file. The path itself should have the messages.db filename at the end. For example:
   defaults write uk.co.opencommunity.vienna2 "DefaultDatabase" '/Users/steve/mydata/messages.db'
3. Restart Vienna.

## One of my subscriptions reports "Error parsing XML data in feed". What does this mean?

It means that Vienna got a feed back from the subscription that it couldn't interpret. There are several reasons for this:

1. The URL of the feed may not be pointing to an RSS or Atom feed but to a web page. Check the URL of the offending feed carefully.
2. The feed itself may contain malformed XML. Some subscriptions make a mistake in putting together the XML that makes up the feed and Vienna cannot interpret malformed XML. Use the Validate Feed command on the File menu to see if this is the case. Unfortunately you cannot do much about this in Vienna except wait for the feed itself to be corrected by the site.
3. The feed may be incomplete. If the refresh was interrupted then the XML data will be incomplete and will appear malformed in Vienna. A second refresh may correct this problem.

If none of the above explain the problem, post a message on the support forum with the URL of the feed exhibiting the problem.

## Is there a shortcut key for going to the next article, marking read, etc?

Probably. There are single key equivalents for some of the menu commands such as:

Spacebar - goes to the next unread article. If the current article is several pages long, it will scroll through that article first. If you're at the end of the current article it will then go to the next unread article. By contrast the Next Unread command (Cmd+U) always goes straight to the next unread article.

R - marks the current article read if it is unread, or unread if it is read.

F - flags the current article if it isn't already flagged, or removes the existing flag if it is not.

Look in the Vienna Help file for more shortcuts.

## How do I use Auto Expire and what does it do?

Auto-expire moves articles older than a certain number of days to the Trash folder. It allows you to keep your folders manageable by only retaining articles that are recent. The auto-expire runs both when Vienna starts and after you have refreshed any subscriptions. To control the age of articles to auto-expire, change the "Expire articles older than" option in Preferences.

Auto-expire will NOT remove unread or flagged articles. It assumes that you haven't read these articles and thus leaves them alone.

## How do I request an enhancement in Vienna?

Post a message over at the support forum. All requested enhancements are logged in the TODO file that is included with the source code as a guidance for future developers.