NAME¶
fvwm-menu-headlines - builds headlines menu definition for fvwm
SYNOPSIS¶
fvwm-menu-headlines [
--help|
-h|
-? ] [
--version|
-V ] [
--info [site] ] [
--site|
-s site ] [
--name|
-n name ] [
--title|
-t title ] [
--item item ] [
--exec|
-e exec-command ] [
--command|
-e
fvwm-command ] [
--icon-title icon ] [
--icon-item icon ] [
--icon-home icon ] [
--icon-error icon ] [
--wm-icons ] [
--frontpage [where] ] [
--proxy|
-p host:port ] [
--file [file] ] [
--fake [file] ] [
--timeout seconds ]
DESCRIPTION¶
This configurable perl script builds an fvwm menu definition for headlines of
popular news web sites: FreshMeat, Slashdot, LinuxToday, DaemonNews,
GNOME-News, KDE-News, RootPrompt, LinuxFr, ThinkGeek, CNN, BBC and more.
It is possible to specify a customized menu item format, change a command
(usually launching a browser) and add menu icons (there is a support for the
wm-icons package).
OPTIONS¶
- --help
- show the help and exit
- --version
- show the version and exit
- --info [site]
- if site name is given print the site specific info, otherwise print all
site names
- --site site
- defile a web site, headlines of which to show, this option also can be
used together with --help to get new defaults. Default site:
freshmeat.
- --name name
- define menu name (default is "MenuHeadlinesFreshmeat")
- --title title
- define menu title (default is "Freshmeat Headlines").
- --item label-format
- --exec command-format
- define format for menu item or command (what is shown and what is executed
when the item is chosen). Default label is '%h\t%[(%Y-%m-%d %H:%M)]'. TAB
can be specified as '\t', but in .fvwm2rc you should specify a double
backslash or a real TAB.
Format specifiers for a headline format:
%h - headline
%u - url
%d - date in the native format (that site backend supplied)
%[strftime-argument-string] - date/time, see strftime(3)
the date/time is represented according to the local time;
date and/or time fields that can't be guessed are stripped
Example: %[|%d %B %Y| %H:%M %S]
If site supplied only date - this becomes %[|%d %B %Y|],
if site supplied no date - this becomes an empty string.
%{name} - site specific named value, like %{comments}
%(text) - arbitrary text, good for escaping or aligning
These specifiers can receive an optional integer size, positive for right
adjusted string or negative for left adjusted, example: %8x; and optional
*num or *-num, which means to leave only the first or last (if minus) num
of chars, the num must be greater than 3, since the striped part is
replaced with "...", example: %*30x. Both can be combined:
%-10*-20x, this instructs to get only the 20 last characters, but if the
length is less then 10 - to fill with up to 10 spaces on the right.
Example:
--exec "iceweasel -remote 'openURL(%u, new-window)' || iceweasel '%u'"
- --command command-format
- like --exec above, but enables to specify any fvwm command, for
example, "Function FuncFvwmShowURL '%u'" not only Exec.
In fact, --exec="mozilla '%u'" is equivalent to
--command="Exec mozilla '%u'"
- --icon-title icon
- --icon-item icon
- --icon-home icon
- --icon-error icon
- define menu icon for title, regular item, frontpage item and error item
respectively. Default is no menu icons (equivalent to an empty icon
argument).
- --wm-icons
- define icon names suitable for use with wm-icons package. Currently this
is equivalent to: --icon-title '' --icon-item menu/information.xpm
--icon-home menu/home.xpm --icon-error menu/choice-no.xpm.
- --frontpage [where]
- add the site frontpage item to the menu. Optional value can be used to
specify where this item will be placed in the menu - 'top' or 't',
'bottom' or 'b'.
- --proxy host[:port]
- define a proxy to use. Example: --proxy proxy.inter.net:3128
- --file [file]
- write the menu output to specified file. If no filename is given with this
option (or empty filename), the default filename WORK_HOME/SITE.menu is
used. Without this option or with '-' filename, the menu output is written
to standard output.
- --fake [file]
- don't connect to the host using HTTP protocol, instead, read from
WORK_HOME/SITE.in file. The following reads input from freshmeat.in
(downloaded http://freshmeat.net/backend/recentnews.txt) and saves output
to segfault.menu (both files are in WORK_HOME): fvwm-menu-headlines --site
freshmeat --fake --file
- --timeout seconds
- limit a line reading from a socket to this timeout, the default timeout is
20 seconds.
WORK_HOME of this script is ~/.fvwm/.fvwm-menu-headlines. It is created if
needed.
Option parameters can be specified either using '=' or in the next argument.
Short options are ok if not ambiguous: "-h", "-t"; but be
careful with short options, what is now unambiguous, can become ambiguous in
the next versions.
USAGE¶
1. One of the ways to use this script is to define a crontab entry to run the
script every hour or so for every monitored site:
0,30 * * * * fvwm-menu-headlines --file --site freshmeat
1,31 * * * * fvwm-menu-headlines --file --site linuxtoday
2,32 * * * * fvwm-menu-headlines --file --site slashdot
Then add these lines to your fvwm configuration file:
DestroyFunc FuncFvwmMenuHeadlines
AddToFunc FuncFvwmMenuHeadlines
+ I Read "$HOME/.fvwm/.fvwm-menu-headlines/$0.menu"
DestroyMenu MenuHeadlines
AddToMenu MenuHeadlines "Headlines" Title
+ MissingSubmenuFunction FuncFvwmMenuHeadlines
+ "FreshMeat" Popup freshmeat
+ "LinuxToday" Popup linuxtoday
+ "Slashdot" Popup slashdot
2. Another way to use this script (only if you have fast network/proxy) is to
run it every time you want to open your Headlines submenus. (Note, the submenu
that is once created is not reloaded, use "Reset all".)
In this case your fvwm configuration lines could be:
DestroyFunc FuncFvwmMenuHeadlines
AddToFunc FuncFvwmMenuHeadlines
+ I PipeRead "fvwm-menu-headlines --site $0"
#+ I Schedule 900000 DestroyMenu $0 # reset generated menu in 15 minutes
DestroyMenu MenuHeadlines
AddToMenu MenuHeadlines "Headlines" Title
+ MissingSubmenuFunction FuncFvwmMenuHeadlines
+ "FreshMeat" Popup freshmeat
+ "Slashdot" Popup slashdot
+ "LinuxToday" Popup linuxtoday
+ "GNOME News" Popup gnome-news
+ "KDE News" Popup kde-news
+ "" Nop
+ "Reset all" FuncResetHeadlines
DestroyFunc FuncResetHeadlines
AddToFunc FuncResetHeadlines
+ I DestroyMenu freshmeat
+ I DestroyMenu linuxtoday
+ I DestroyMenu slashdot
+ I DestroyMenu gnome-news
+ I DestroyMenu kde-news
And finally, add "Popup MenuHeadlines" somewhere.
3. Here is a usual usage. Use FvwmConsole or FvwmCommand to run fvwm commands
from a shell script. Every time you want headlines from some site, execute
(give any additional options if you want):
PipeRead "fvwm-menu-headlines --site newsforge --name MenuHeadlinesNewsForge"
# this may take several seconds, you may use: BusyCursor Read true
Popup MenuHeadlinesNewsForge
HOW TO ADD SITE HEADLINES¶
It is possible to add user defined site headlines without touching the script
itself. Put your perl extensions to the file WORK_HOME/extension.pl. For each
site add something similar to:
$site_info->{'myslashdot'} = {
'name' => "MySlashdot",
'host' => "myslashdot.org",
'path' => "/myslashdot.xml",
'func' => \&process_my_slashdot,
# the following string is only used in --info
'flds' => 'time, title, department, topic, author, url',
};
sub process_my_slashdot () {
return process_xml(
'story',
# mandatory 'h', 'u' and 'd' aliases or undef
{ 'h' => 'title', 'u' => 'url', 'd' => 'time' },
sub ($) { # convert 'd' string to (y, m, d, H, M, S)
$_[0] =~ /(\d+)-(\d+)-(\d+) (\d+):(\d+):(\d+)/;
($1, ($2 || 0) - 1, $3, $4, $5, $6);
}, +0, # timezone offset; already in UTC
);
}
1;
AUTHORS¶
This script is inspired by WMHeadlines v1.3 by:
Jeff Meininger <jeffm@boxybutgood.com>
(http://rive.boxybutgood.com/WMHeadlines/).
Reimplemented for fvwm and heavily enhanced by:
Mikhael Goikhman <migo@homemail.com>, 16 Dec 1999.
COPYING¶
The script is distributed by the same terms as fvwm itself. See GNU General
Public License for details.
BUGS¶
I try to keep all supported site info up to date, but sites often go down,
change their backend formats, change their httpd responses, just stop to post
news and so on; the script in the latest cvs may be more up to date.
The headline times may be off by one hour or more, since the time is displayed
for your local time zone, and the time zone of the original time in the site
backend output is often guessed (sometimes incorrectly); similarly it is
guessed whether to apply the daylight saving correction.
Report bugs to fvwm-bug@fvwm.org.
