About
Every reader ever built helps you capture more.This one helps you finish.
The argument
Completion is the product. Nobody has ever finished Twitter.
A number in the corner that says 847 is not ordinary, however normal the category has made it. It is a running tally of debt to publishers who never lent you anything, and it follows from the shape of the thing. A reader collects, so the interesting engineering is in collecting better, and the number goes up because the product is working.
Taper answers the same problem in the opposite direction. You say how many items an edition holds. It fills exactly that, from the sources you already read, and then it ends. Nothing underneath the last one, no button to load more, and no count of anything.
The ceiling
Your sources are queued, not hidden.
Every source you follow is in the running for every edition. The ones you mark as always are never counted against the size, and the rest take fair turns, so a publisher posting forty times an hour cannot take the page.
What falls outside is what you would have scrolled past, and there is nowhere else for it to go. That is deliberate: a room of its own for everything that missed the edition would say the size was not a judgement. Anything still current arrives on your next refresh, and anything worth a second reading goes to Saved with one key.
What it does
Nothing is held back from the free tier to make it look thin.
- Sources
- Paste any address and Taper finds the feed behind it. OPML in and out, a catalogue to start from, and no number on the list in either tier.
- Editions
- Each one owns its sources, its filters and its size. 15 of them free, without a number on Pro; shelves group them in the rail, and lapsing locks the ones past the 15th rather than deleting them.
- The dimmer
- 6 stops, 5 to 50, set per edition rather than per device. The edition is blended the moment you open it, and none of it is stored.
- Source tiers
- Always, normal and background, set per edition, so a source worth reading in one is background in another. Always never counts against the size, and the rest take fair turns.
- Filters
- Keep a word out, or keep only what matches, on every edition in both tiers. Pro adds operators and brackets, as in
(rust or zig) and not hiring, with matching scoped to the headline, the summary or the author, sets you save once and reuse, and mutes that run out on a date you choose. - Reading
- Google Reader keys: j, k, o, s. Publishers' own pictures, on unless you turn them off. Light, dark, or whatever the system says. Saved items, kept as long as you want them.
Decide how much news is enough.
Bring the sources you already read. Set a size. Reach the end of it, and find nothing underneath.
Free. No card, and bring every source you follow.