News Clipper Version 1.32, Open Source http://newsclipper.sourceforge.net/ News Clipper is an information integrator. It creates a custom web page from a template HTML file with special tags, replacing those tags with dynamic information acquired from the internet. This is the Open Source version of News Clipper. You either got this in conjunction with a purchase of a commercial version, or in source-only form. If you got it the latter way, you can buy the commercial version which will get you: technical support, a nice user's manual, pre-compiled binaries, and free upgrades for a year. Visit http://www.newsclipper.com/ for more information. New in version 1.32: - Fixed more installation problems - Dropped DBI requirement during installation because it's really optional. - Changed commercial version so it can run on any operating system with the same registration key. (Old keys will continue to work if on the same operating system, but new ones will need to be issued if a new operating system is needed.) - Made handler loading routines more robust to illegal characters in the handler name. See the file CHANGES for a complete change history. DEVELOPMENT The News Clipper development website is hosted by SourceForge at http://newsclipper.sourceforge.net/ There are design documents there describing how News Clipper works, as well as planned enhancements, known bugs, etc. SUPPORT & DOCUMENTATION Support for News Clipper Open Source is provided through the News Clipper User and News Clipper Developer mailing lists. Instructions for joining are at http://newsclipper.sourceforge.net/ 'perldoc NewsClipper.pl' will give you an overview of the software. A complete user's manual is available with the purchase of the commercial version (see below). Also try running with the -d switch if you have problems, or see the FAQ at http://www.newsclipper.com/techsup.htm. Report bugs to bugreport@newsclipper.com PREREQUISITES - NOTE: This version of News Clipper uses a custom version of File::Cache. You may encounter a warning during installation about a pre-existing File/Cache.pm file. You can safely ignore this warning. Secondly, you will need to install File::Spec version 0.82 or better. - If you do not have Perl installed on your system, download and install it from http://www.perl.com/. You will need Perl version 5.004 or newer. - Windows users will need to install nmake if they do not already have it. It can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe - News Clipper requires the following packages: TimeDate Time-modules URI HTML::Parser HTML::Tree File::Cache libwww LockFile::Simple Log::Agent Log::Agent::Rotate Be advised that these modules also require other modules: URI requires MIME::Base64 HTML::Tree requires libwww and Font::AFM libwww requires URI, MIME::Base64, HTML::Parser, and Net::FTP (in libnet). In addition, Windows users will need to install the latest version of libwin32, and RedHat Linux users should install a newer version of IO. Windows users should use the ppm utility that comes with ActivePerl to install these modules. Run "ppm", then type "install MODULE" for each module, in the following order: MIME-Base64, libnet, Font-AFM, Digest-MD5, URI, HTML-Parser, libwww-perl, TimeDate, Time-modules, HTML-Tree, libwin32. There isn't a ppm version of the File::Cache distribution yet. You'll have to install it manually from the URL below. Non-Windows users should download and install the modules from the following URLs, in order: MIME-Base64-X.XX.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/MIME/ libnet-X.XXXX.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Net/ Font-AFM-X.XX.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Font/ Digest-MD5-X.XX.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Digest/ URI-X.XX.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/URI/ HTML-Parser-X.XX.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/HTML/ libwww-perl-X.XX.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/LWP/ TimeDate-X.XX.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Time/ Time-modules-XX.XXXXXX.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Time/ HTML-Tree-X.XX.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/HTML/ IO-X.XX.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/IO/ File-Cache-X.XX.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/File/ LockFile-Simple-X.X.X.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/LockFile/ Log-Agent-X.X.X.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Log/ Log-Agent-Rotate-X.X.X.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Log/ Storable-X.X.X.tar.gz => http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Storable/ INSTALLATION [Note that these instructions have worked for Windows in the past, but they have not been verified recently. Your mileage may vary.] - run "perl Makefile.PL" - On Unix-like systems, you have the option of installing News Clipper as a single user, or system-wide. Install as a single user if you do not have root access on your system, or if you do not want to make News Clipper accessible to all the users on your system. For a single user installation, you will have to specify the locations of the News Clipper root directory, and the manual pages. You can create a symbolic link from the binaries in the bin subdirectory to your ~/bin directory, or augment your PATH environment variable to include the bin subdirectory. Likewise, you can specify a man page installation path that is already in your MANPATH environment variable, or augment your MANPATH environment variable. For a system-wide installation, the installation program will install the programs and man pages in the default perl locations. The system-wide NewsClipper.cfg file should be placed in a location that is readable by all users. (And make sure the permissions are set correctly.) - On Windows systems, you will need to specify a location where News Clipper can store its handlers and configuration information. You will also need to specify your time zone in one of the following formats. Universal: GMT, UT US zones : EST, EDT, CST, CDT, MST, MDT, PST, PDT Military : A to Z (except J) Other : +HHMM or -HHMM ISO 8601 : +HH:MM, +HH, -HH:MM, -HH For example, if you are in the Central Standard Time zone, you would enter "CST" - run "make" or "nmake" - run "make install" or "nmake install" - Either copy NewsClipper.cfg to ~/.NewsClipper, or set the NEWSCLIPPER environment variable as described in the CONFIGURING section below. UPGRADING FROM A PREVIOUS VERSION - In this distribution you will find a program called "ConvertHandler", which will update any handlers you may have written for a previous version of News Clipper. You should delete handlers you did not write from your handlers directory -- new versions will be automatically be downloaded from the News Clipper handler server. - During installation, Makefile.PL will attempt to find any existing NewsClipper.cfg file you have and convert it to the current version using the "ConvertConfig" application that comes with the distribution. - Run "ConvertConfig NewsClipper.cfg" from the command prompt to update any other NewsClipper.cfg files you have. CONFIGURING - On Windows systems, the location of the configuration file is stored in the registry. - On non-Windows systems, configuration information is first looked for in the system-wide location specified by the NEWSCLIPPER environment variable. News Clipper will then load the user's NewsClipper.cfg from $home/.NewsClipper. Options that appear in the personal configuration file override those in the system-wide configuration file. This means that a user's configuration file can consist solely of %config = ( 'inputFiles' => ['input.txt'], 'outputFiles' => ['output.html'], ); - Each line in the News Clipper configuration file (NewsClipper.cfg) that begins with a '#' is a comment that describes the option following it. - See "perldoc NewsClipper.pl" for a description of the configuration parameters. TESTING - To run on Windows platforms, start a command prompt and change directories to the SampleFiles directory included in the distribution. Run "perl INSTALLDIR\bin\NewsClipper.pl" - To run on non-Windows platforms, change directories to the SampleFiles directory included in the distribution. Run "INSTALLDIR/bin/NewsClipper.pl" for a single-user installation, or something like "/usr/bin/NewsClipper.pl" for a system-wide installation. This will cause News Clipper to process the input file specified in the NewsClipper.cfg file. (When you first install News Clipper, this will be a file located in the SampleFiles directory.) The first time you run News Clipper, News Clipper will download the handlers it needs. There is also some delay in contacting the handler server and the content provider. Please be patient. Subsequent executions will be faster. The default installation processes a sample input file found in the "INSTALLDIR\SampleFiles" directory. You can view the output file (located in "INSTALLDIR\SampleFiles\output.html") using your favorite web browser. ADDING DYNAMIC CONTENT TO YOUR SITE To see how News Clipper might add value to your web site, do the following: - Choose a web page to enhance. - Edit you configuration file so that the full path and filename of the file is specified for the input file. (Optionally, you can change the output file.) - Edit you input file using a text editor, or an HTML editor. - Choose a suitable location for the content, and then insert one of the following News Clipper commands as an HTML comment: - Run News Clipper to create the output file. - View the output file in your favorite browser. AVAILABILITY The latest open source version is always available at http://newsclipper.sourceforge.net/. PRIMARY AUTHOR David Coppit (david@coppit.org http://coppit.org/) Spinnaker Software (http://www.spinnakersoft.com/) COPYRIGHT & LICENSE Copyright 1997,1998,1999,2000 David Coppit (david@coppit.org, http://coppit.org/) This code is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). See html://www.opensource.org/gpl-license.html and http://www.opensource.org/.