A simple shell script and the ascii2uni tool is all it takes to add RSS feeds to conky.

1. Add this line to your .conkyrc, adapting the path of the script and the http://... for your rss feed.

${execi 300 /home/brb/bin/conky-rss.sh http://www.nzz.ch/feeds/recent/ 4 2 | ascii2uni -a D} 

2. Create a shell script in a folder like ~/bin:

#!/bin/bash
# RSS Display Script by Bill Woodford (admin@sdesign.us) v1.0
#
# This script is designed to output story titles for most any RSS Feed.
#
# This script depends on curl.  Please ensure it is installed and in your $PATH
# Gentoo: emerge -av net-misc/curl
# Debian: apt-get install curl
# Homepage: http://curl.haxx.se/
#
# Usage:
# .conkyrc:	${execi [time] /path/to/script/conky-rss.sh URI LINES TITLENUM}
#	URI = Location of feed, ex. http://www.gentoo.org/rdf/en/glsa-index.rdf
#	LINES = How many titles to display (default 5)
#	TITLENUM = How many times the title of the feed itself is specified, usually 1 or 2 (default 2)
#
# Usage Example		
#		${execi 300 /home/youruser/scripts/conky-rss.sh http://www.foxnews.com/xmlfeed/rss/0,4313,1,00.rss 4 2}
 
#RSS Setup - Don't change unless you want these values hard-coded!
uri=$1							#URI of RSS Feed
lines=$2						#Number of headlines
titlenum=$3						#Number of extra titles
 
#Script start
#Require a uri, as a minimum
if [[ "$uri" == "" ]]; then
	echo "No URI specified, cannot continue!" >&2
	echo "Please read script for more information" >&2
else
	#Set defaults if none specified
	if [[ $lines == "" ]]; then lines=5 ; fi
	if [[ $titlenum == "" ]]; then titlenum=2 ; fi
 
	#The actual work
	curl -s --connect-timeout 30 $uri |\
	sed -e 's/<\/title>/\n/g' |\
	grep -o '<title>.*' |\
	sed -e 's/<title>//' |\
	head -n $(($lines + $titlenum)) |\
	tail -n $(($lines))
fi

Ref:

• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1358302

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