Hyperlink over both columns

[Bender Rodriguez]

First, thank you for this great tool!

I use the CMD and FILECONTENTS2 commands and the tool XMLStarlet to display RSS feeds on my desktop, e.g. the first 5 entries from Reddit r/programming:

COMMENT=active:1,style:b,text:Reddit r/programming
CMD=active:1,interval:1800,hidden:1,file:cmd.exe,parameters:/c curl -s -A "Mozilla/5.0 Firefox/68.0" https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/.rss | xml sel -t -v "/_:feed/_:entry[position()<6]/_:title" > reddit_programming.txt
FILECONTENTS2=active:1,interval:1800,file:reddit_programming.txt

Now I want to turn the entries into clickable hyperlinks. My attempt is the following (here for the first 2 entries):

; Download RSS feed from Reddit r/programming
CMD=active:1,interval:1800,hidden:1,file:cmd.exe,parameters:/c curl -s -A "Mozilla/5.0 Firefox/68.0" https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/.rss > reddit.xml
; 1st entry
CMD=active:1,interval:1800,hidden:1,file:cmd.exe,parameters:/c xml sel -t -v "/_:feed/_:entry[1]/_:title" reddit.xml > reddit1_text.txt
CMD=active:1,interval:1800,hidden:1,file:cmd.exe,parameters:/c xml sel -t -v "/_:feed/_:entry[1]/_:link/@href" reddit.xml > reddit1_url.txt
FILECONTENTS2=active:1,interval:1800,hidden:1,file:reddit1_text.txt,set:reddit1_text
FILECONTENTS2=active:1,interval:1800,hidden:1,file:reddit1_url.txt,set:reddit1_url
CONTROL=active:1,interval:1800,type:1,button-color:#000000,hover-color:#dddddd,text:,display:%reddit1_text%,uri:%reddit1_url%
; 2nd entry
CMD=active:1,interval:1800,hidden:1,file:cmd.exe,parameters:/c xml sel -t -v "/_:feed/_:entry[2]/_:title" reddit.xml > reddit2_text.txt
CMD=active:1,interval:1800,hidden:1,file:cmd.exe,parameters:/c xml sel -t -v "/_:feed/_:entry[2]/_:link/@href" reddit.xml > reddit2_url.txt
FILECONTENTS2=active:1,interval:1800,hidden:1,file:reddit2_text.txt,set:reddit2_text
FILECONTENTS2=active:1,interval:1800,hidden:1,file:reddit2_url.txt,set:reddit2_url
CONTROL=active:1,interval:1800,type:1,button-color:#000000,hover-color:#dddddd,text:,display:%reddit2_text%,uri:%reddit2_url%

The links work, but unfortunately the result doesn’t look that well, because the text is only in the right column:

My questions/feature requests:
1) How can I display the hyperlink over both columns? If it isn’t possible currently, could you add an option to display hyperlinks over both columns?
2) Can I display the links without underlining?
3) Can I set a transparent hover background for the links?
4) Is there an easier way to achieve what I want, than to extract each entry title and URL into a separate text file and user variable?

[Bender Rodriguez]

I just saw that #000000 will per default be transparent instead of black. So please consider my third question as obsolete.

[Glenn]

Every day I am amazed at the kind of things people do with Desktop Info. Converting an RSS feed into hyperlinks is the best yet!

1 & 2. I’ll make it respond to the style common option with the bold, underline, italic and wide options.
3. You can use the button-color option but this makes clicking it rather hard. There’s a reason that hover background is there.
4. Nothing comes to mind. I’m open to ideas though.

[Bender Rodriguez]

It works great with the new v1.19 version now.
Thank you very much for the update!

[Author]

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