Re: Request: Ticker-2-Mail
> Given the growing numbers of ticker and news services, don't people think
> it is time to establish a system that will convert the most recent items
> into mail sending to the user? One would then only have to add a cronjob
> and read n more mails instead of leeching to all the news services. The
> mail should, of course, not contain the menues, buttons, ads etc., thus
> lynx -dump is not the proper tool.
one way to do this might be using a perl script. i've written two pieces of
software recently. the first is a revision of slashapp (a gnome panel applet)
that uses libxml so that it can parse headlines from any site with an rdf
file (http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf,
http://linuxtoday.com/backends/linuxtoday.rdf). the second is a custom perl
script that yanks slashdot headlines, local weather, summaries of which
episodes of the simpsons will be on that night, and even the most recent
alan's diary entry, etc. i haven't worked on it in awhile, but i believe it
uses the LWP perl module, which is undoubtedly somewhere in debian. it uses my
netscape cookie file, as well, and runs via a cronjob every morning, and
prints the output while i am showering. it also reads from a custom file
to remind me of weekly events (Thursday = LWN day, etc.)
i can release what i have later today or tomorrow, but it is pretty hard
coded to the sites i read now. while i was constructing it, however, i
remember seeing a site with parsers for loads of different sites.
finally, if one were to construct from scratch or give mine a huge facelift,
though libxml isn't for perl, i'm sure the xml perl libraries are very good.
also, i do need to learn (more) python soon, so maybe after i'm not so bogged
down with work, i could work on a python version. a gnome front end would
be neat, too (just for configuration, though a reader wouldn't be
so bad, either)...
> I read that portaloo is a beginning, however, it is web-based again.
> Portaloo is http://www.linux.org.uk/cgi-bin/portaloo
if you'd like, i can have alan give you the source...it reads xml, afaik.
the back-end and front-end are totally separate.
justin
--
Justin Maurer justin@linux.hypnotic.org
IFT Systems, Inc. http://linux.hypnotic.org
6717 N.31st Street Tel: +1 (703) 237-5511
Arlington, Virginia, 22213 USA acf on LinuxNet
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