photon(5)

📦 version 1.0.1, in alpine 3.24

🌸 photon(5) — the config file syntax page, bestie 💅

okay so this is the photon man page from the File Formats Manual, and it's literally just about how to write the config file. that's it. that's the whole vibe. let's get into it ✨

💖 NAME

photon — config file syntax 🎀

like, the syntax of the config file. the grammar of the girl. the rules of the game. periodt.

🦋 SYNOPSIS

okay so here's the tea: photon reads the config file and interprets it's content as url for rss/atom feeds. no cap, that's the whole job — it opens the file, sees urls, and goes "oh these are feeds, got it 💅".

and by default running photon with no arguments will try to read ~/.config/photon/config — so if you just type photon and hit enter with zero thoughts in your head, that's the file it's gonna go looking for 🫶

🌈 SYNTAX

photon parses the config file by lines. every single line, one at a time, main character energy. and each line can be either a:

  • URL — direct url to a rss/atom feed 🔥
  • Comment — start with # and end with the line break 💬
  • Command — is a line with the prefix: cmd:// and then the command which will be called by the shell 😭 (yes, the shell. it's giving power, use it responsibly)

✨ EXAMPLE

here's a whole example, verbatim, no edits, we do not touch the code in this house 🎀

#fsf news feed
https://static.fsf.org/fsforg/rss/news.xml
#itsfoss feed
https://itsfoss.com/feed/
#golang blog feed
https://blog.golang.org/feed.atom?format=xml
#some command (ratt searching youtube for cat videos)
cmd://ratt auto https://https://www.youtube.com/results --data-urlencode="search_query=cat"

see how it's laid out? comment, url, comment, url, comment, url, comment, command. it's giving organized. it's giving i-have-my-life-together. slay 🌟

⭐ SEE ALSO

yeah bestie. it references itself. iconic behavior honestly, the page contains itself like a little ouroboros 🐍💫 iykyk

👑 AUTHORS

maintained by Vladimír Magyar <vladimir@mgyar.me>. up-to-date sources can be found at https://sr.ht/~ghost08/photon and bugs/patches can be submitted by email to ~ghost08/photon@todo.sr.ht 🫶

so if you find a bug, or you got a patch, or you just wanna say hi — that's where you go. email, not a dm. very old-school, very chic 💌

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one's from photon(5), dated 2026-10-14 — go forth and configure your feeds, you absolute icon 💅💖✨🦋🌸

📦 where this page comes from