RSS"> ]> &Frerich.Raabe; &Frerich.Raabe.mail; &Jonathan.Singer; &Jonathan.Singer.mail; 2001, 2002, 2003 &Frerich.Raabe; &FDLNotice; 2003-10-14 2.00.00 &knewsticker; is a news ticker applet for the &kde; panel (also known as &kicker;). KDE KNewsTicker kdenetwork news ticker applet &knewsticker; is an applet for the &kde; panel (also known as &kicker;) which provides an easy and convenient way to access the news as reported by many news sites (such as Slashdot, &Linux; Weekly News or Freshmeat). To achieve this, &knewsticker; requires the news sites to provide a special &RSS; file, which contains the headlines as well as pointers to the corresponding full articles. Such files are very common these days, and &knewsticker; already comes with a selection of good news sources which provide such files. &RSS; files are becoming more and more popular these days, and this applet is not the first application which takes advantage of them. But what are &RSS; files? This section tries to give a brief answer to this question, as well as pointers to other sources for further reference. The short answer: &RSS; is an &XML;-based format for syndicating web content. &RSS; is often used as an acronym for Rich Site Summary – that's not a common definition but it gives an idea on what the creators of &RSS; had in mind. There is no consensus on what &RSS; stands for, so it's actually not an acronym, it's a name. &RSS; originated in 1999 and was invented by NetScape as a syndication format for their my.netscape.com website; this very first &RSS; release was version 0.9. A few months after that, &Netscape; introduced &RSS; version 0.91, which incorporated many features of the <scriptingNews> format. The basic concept of all &RSS; files is to provide a clean, simple and portable way to distribute web content, in particular news: the news sites provide an &RSS; file which basically contains a set of records, and each record consists of a headline and a &URL; which points to the complete article. The &RSS; file also contains other general information about the particular news site, such as its name and the homepage, which is evaluated by &knewsticker;. Nowadays there are a few additional, more sophisticated versions of the &RSS; format (0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 1.0 and the current format version 2.0) but the first two versions still make up about 85% of the files provided on the web. Nevertheless, all versions up to 2.0 can be processed with &knewsticker;! Of course, this is only a short and highly incomplete attempt at explaining the basic ideas behind &RSS; files. If you're interested in this topic, you might want to visit any of the following links which point to further and more complete sources on this: http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/intro/ A very pragmatic introduction to the &RSS; format, with concrete examples and guidelines. Together with the authoritative specifications, this makes a good guide for people who are thinking about providing an &RSS; newsfeed on their home page. http://www.oreillynet.com/rss/ The &RSS; page from O'Reilly features a lot of general articles about employing and using &RSS; files, up to date news about the &RSS; development community as well as vital information for web developers who are considering taking advantage of &RSS;. http://blogspace.com/rss/ This page is another excellent source of news about the &RSS; development, which is especially interesting to developers working with &RSS;-based technology. http://www.w3.org/RDF/ The authoritative source about RDF, an &XML;-based language from which modern &RSS; versions are derived, published by the World Wide Web Consortium. It features a comprehensive list of links to other sites on the topic as well as a timeline of the RDF development, an overview over the architecture, an archive with articles about RDF as well as a carefully assembled list of tools for developers who intend to work with RDF. Developers will also want to check the authoritative specifications for the various &RSS; versions: Version 0.90: http://www.purplepages.ie/rss/netscape/rss0.90.html Version 0.91: http://backend.userland.com/rss091 Version 0.92: http://backend.userland.com/rss092 Version 0.93: http://backend.userland.com/rss093 Version 1.0: http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/ Version 2.0: http://backend.userland.com/rss If you find any other sites or documents on this topic, and think they are worth being mentioned here, don't hesitate to send them to &Frerich.Raabe; &Frerich.Raabe.mail; so that they can be included in this document and help everybody. Thank you very much! Here is a screenshot of &knewsticker; in &kde;'s panel. Here is a screenshot of &knewsticker; in &kde;'s panel. &knewsticker; is started like every other &kicker; applet. You just have to add it to the panel (or any child panel of the main one). To do so, just right-click on the &kde; panel and choose Add Applet&knewsticker; . Here is a screenshot of &knewsticker; in its own child panel. Here is a screenshot of &knewsticker; in its own child panel. Another good way to use &knewsticker; is to put it into its own child panel. Just add a new child panel by choosing Add ExtensionChild Panel from the panel menu;. Now you can simply right-click on the child panel and select &knewsticker; as described above. Here is a screenshot of &knewsticker; in its own window. Here is a screenshot of &knewsticker; in its own window. A third, popular, way to run &knewsticker; is by selecting Internet&knewsticker; (News Ticker) from the K menu. This will start &knewsticker; and make it run in its own window which you can then resize and move around as you wish. You can access &knewsticker;'s configuration dialog by right-clicking onto the scroll text, or by clicking on the button with the arrow on it and choosing the entry labelled Preferences in the menu. This is what the General tab of the preferences dialog looks like. This is what the General tab of the preferences dialog looks like. Here you can define how fast the text should be scrolled around, what it should look like as well as other options for the applet. Here is a brief info on what each of the switches and buttons on this tab does: Mousewheel sensitivity: This slider allows you to define how fast/slow the text should be scrolled when using the mousewheel. News query interval Here you can define in what intervals &knewsticker; queries the configured news sources for new headlines. This depends generally on how fast you'd like to hear about news and how much load you want to put on the network: A lower value (lower than 15 minutes) enables you to be notified about news very quickly if you want or need to. Please note, that it increases the network traffic significantly, though. Therefore, such low values shouldn't be used if you query popular news sites (such as Slashdot or Freshmeat) as they have generally already enough work with processing the incoming queries. A higher value (higher than 45 minutes) won't make you hear about news that quick. For non-time-critical applications, it should be suitable, though. The positive aspect of longer intervals is that only very little load is put on the network; this saves resources and nerves, for you and the system administrators of the news sites you query. The default value (30 minutes) should be appropriate and reasonable in most cases. Use custom names for news sites Check this box to make the news ticker use the names you specified in the list of news sources (available on the tab labeled News sources) instead of the ones the news sites themselves report. This can be handy for news sites which report a very long or useless name. This is what the News Sources tab of the preferences dialog looks like. This is what the News Sources tab of the preferences dialog looks like. On this tab you can manage and maintain the list of news sites &knewsticker; queries for news. Click on any entry with the right mouse button to open a context menu which lets you remove the current entry, or add a new entry. At the bottom of the page you can also find three buttons which have the same effect. There are four ways to add a new news site to the list: You can click on the button at the bottom labeled Add.... You can click with the right mouse button on the table and choose Add news source. You can drag any &RSS; file from another application (such as &konqueror;) onto the table. This adds a new entry to the list, sets the name to Unknown and sets the maximum number of articles to 10. And finally, you can just click on any &RSS; file in the &konqueror; filemanager to have it added to the list immediately. Either way will cause the News site dialog to show up, presenting you with a form to enter the properties of the news site to add. There are two ways to adjust the properties of an existing news site: You can click on the button at the bottom labeled Modify.... You can right-click with the right mouse button on the news site you'd like to edit and choose Modify '...' from the menu. No matter which way you chose, it will cause the News site dialog to pop up, showing the properties of the selected news site. Of course, you want to remove a news source from the list sometimes. To do this, you can either click on the button at the bottom labeled Remove, or right-click with the right mouse button on the news site you'd like to edit and choose Remove '...' from the menu. In both cases, a confirmation box will pop up and make sure you didn't select the wrong entry. You can also remove multiple news sites at once by holding &Ctrl; while clicking on the entries you wouldd like to remove, or by clicking the left mousebutton and dragging the mouse over all the entries you'd like to select. This is what the dialog for adding and editing news sites looks like. This is what the dialog for adding and editing news sites looks like. When adding or modifying a news site, the news site dialog (shown above) pops up and provides input facilities to edit the various properties of a news site: Name: This is the name of the news source. This text will only be used if Use custom names for news sites on the tab labeled General is activated. Source file: Here you can set the &URL; which references the &RSS; file of this news site; this can either be a local file, or a file saved on a remote server. You can also click on the button at the right to open a convenient file-selection dialog and browse to the file you would like to use, instead of typing the &URL; by hand. The file is a program If this file is checked, &knewsticker; will not assume that the &URL; (which was specified in the Source file field) references an &RSS; file, but rather that the &URL; refers a program (usually a script). When querying this news site, &knewsticker; will execute the program and treat whatever the program prints to stdout as &RSS; markup. This is very convenient for conversion scripts which download an &HTML; file and process it, producing &RSS; markup which is suitable for use with &knewsticker;. You can find some scripts which ⪚ download stock data in the kdeaddons module, in the knewsticker-scripts directory. Category: Here you can specify into which category the news site belongs. Arranging the news sites into categories makes it much easier to maintain large lists of news sites. Max. articles: This option lets you define how many articles &knewsticker; will cache for this news site; the value will never be exceeded. This is particularly handy for news sites which provide only three news items at once, but you'd like to see the last ten items (for instance); &knewsticker; will always download the three items and merge them into its list, caching the last seven items. Icon: Here you can specify a &URL; to an image file (preferably 16x16 pixels in size) which should be used for this news site. Icons make it much easier to distinguish multiple news sites, and see which news site a headline appeared on as it scrolls by in &knewsticker;. At the button you will find the usual buttons. One of them deserves an extra note: clicking on the Suggest button will make &knewsticker; try to guess suitable values for most of the fields if you specify a &URL; to a valid source file. This means that you can usually just paste a &URL; to an &RSS; file in the input field labeled Source file, press the Suggest button and then modify the suggested values as needed. This is what the Filters tab of the preferences dialog looks like. This is what the Filters tab of the preferences dialog looks like. This tab allows you to define various filters which should be applied before showing the headlines in the scroll text. These filters only affect the headlines which are shown in the scrolltext; the menu will always show all of the headlines. The major part of the tab is occupied by a table which lists the currently configured filters. Each filter has a small checkable box - checking that box enables the filter, unchecking it temporarily disables it without removing it from the list. By default there are no filters, so chances are that the table is completely empty for you. Of course, this dialog provides you with ways to add new filters, and manage them in general: To add a filter, simply enter the filter properties (see Filter Components for a detailed description of the various filter properties) using the input fields in the box labeled Filter properties and then press the button labeled Add. To modify an existing filter, select the filter you would like to edit in the table by left-clicking on it and then change its properties in the box at the bottom. To remove a filter, select it in the table and then press the button labeled Remove. Each filter consists of four components: Action – this can be either Show or Hide and defines what should happen to a headline in case this filter matches. News sources – here you can define whether the filter affects only single news sources, or whether this filter should be applied to the headlines of all news sources. Condition – this is a verb which defines, together with the Expression, whether a filter matches. A condition can be ⪚ contains, doesn't equal or matches. See below for a more detailed description. Expression - this is a user-defined string which forms the body of the filter, together with the Condition. See below for a more detailed description of this component. All these components can be configured using the facilities in the frame labeled Filter properties. The possible states of the Condition component deserve a special explanation: contains, doesn't contain: this filter matches if the headline contains / doesn't contain the specified expression. The expression isn't treated case-sensitively, so the expressions KDE, kDE or kde will all match headlines which contain KDE. equals, doesn't equal: this filter matches if the headline equals / doesn't equal the specified expression. The expression is treated case-sensitively, so of the expressions &Linux;, linux or LINUX, only the first will match &Linux;. matches: using this condition will make &knewsticker; treat the given expression as a regular expression. For further information on regular expressions you might want to read this article which was published at www.evolt.org. This is what the Scroller Preferences tab of the preferences dialog looks like. This is what the Scroller Preferences tab of the preferences dialog looks like. This tab lets you define various options which affect &knewsticker;'s scroll text: Scrolling speed This slider lets you define how fast the scrolltext should be scrolling. If you have rather little space on your taskbar (and therefore a rather small news ticker), you should probably set this to a lower value so that you have a chance to read the headlines. For wider news tickers (and better eyes), a faster text is probably appropriate so that you have to wait for the next headline only as little as possible. Direction of scrolling These options allow you to define in what direction the text should be scrolled, ⪚ to the left or to the right, upwards or downwards. You can also rotate the text by 90 or 270 degrees here, which is not exactly readable but it makes sense for vertically aligned panels. Scrolltext font Click on the button at the right labeled Choose Font... to choose the font which will be used for the scrolling text. Certain fonts are harder to read than others, especially when they are used for a scrolltext, so you should probably choose a font which can even easily be read if it's moving. Foreground color Click this button open a convenient color-selection dialog which lets you choose the color which will be used for the foreground of the scrolling text (&ie; the color of the text itself). Background color Click this button to open a convenient color-selection dialog which lets you choose the color which will be used for the background of the scrolling text. Highlighted color Click this button to open a convenient color-selection dialog which lets you choose the color which will be used for the color of the headlines when they are highlighted (when you move the mouse over them). Scroll the most recent headlines only Check this button to make the scrolltext show just the most recent headline for each news site, instead of showing every headline available from every news site. Show icons Checking this box will make &knewsticker; show an icon (if available) in front of each headline which is scrolled along; this makes determining which news site provided each headline much easier. Temporarily slowed scrolling Check this box to make &knewsticker; slow the scrolling down when you move the mouse cursor over the scrolling text. This makes clicking on items and dragging away the icons (if enabled) a lot easier. Underline highlighted headline Check this box to have the currently highlighted headline (&ie; the headline which is currently under the mouse cursor) underlined. Using &knewsticker; is fairly straightforward and should give you no big problems, assuming that you have already configured it. No matter whether you are running &knewsticker; in the main panel, in its own child panel or in its own window, it appears as an area with a scrolling text and a button with a small arrow next to it. The area (it is white by default, but you can change the background color easily using the preferences dialog) with the scrolling text in it is called the news scroller. It keeps scrolling the downloaded headlines (or just the most recent headlines) continuously and provides easy access to the articles. If you see an interesting article, just click on it to open the &konqueror; web browser, showing the full article which belongs to the headline you clicked on. If you feel that a possibly interesting headline just scrolled out of view, you have some ways to influence the scrolling: You can click on the news scroller with the left mouse button and move the mouse around (while holding the left mouse button pressed down). The news scroller will continue scrolling as usual if you release the left mouse button again. If you own a so-called wheel mouse, you can use the wheel on your mouse to scroll the headlines back and forth. There's also a very powerful context menu, which you can access either by clicking on the news scroller with the right mouse button, or by clicking on the arrow button with the left button. This context menu is the most interesting part of the applet, as it contains about all the functionality. This is what the context menu of &knewsticker; looks like, when using just the default news sites. This is what the context menu of &knewsticker; looks like, when using just the default news sites. The context menu is basically split into two functional parts: The upper part shows a list of entries, each entry having a small icon like this next to it. This list represents the list of currently configured news sites. You can click on any of the news sources to open another menu which contains a listing of headlines which are available for that particular news site as well as an entry labeled Check news to refresh the headline list for this news site. Each of the headlines has an icon next to it indicating that that you have read that article already or the if it is still unread. The lower part currently shows five entries (explained from top to bottom): Check news This entry has a little next to it. If you want to force &knewsticker; to check the configured news sites for new articles, you can click here. This does not reset the internal timer which queries the news sites for new headlines automatically in certain intervals. Offline mode This entry in the context menu has no icon associated with it. Click this button to enable a special offline mode which pauses the internal timer for querying the news sites and prevents any automatic download of new headlines. The offline mode comes in handy if you have to leave your computer for a while during which the system isn't connected to the Internet, as it saves you from all the error messages which pop up if any of the news sites couldn't be connected. You can still force a reload for single news sites as well as for all the news sites by selecting the respective Check news entry. Help This entry is marked with a small . Clicking on this entry opens the &knewsticker; documentation (which you're reading in this moment) which details all the features and abilities of &knewsticker;. About This entry is marked with a small . Clicking on this entry opens a small dialog showing who's to blame for &knewsticker; and credits people who contributed significant enhancements for it. Preferences This entry is easily recognizable due to the icon which is next to it. Select this entry to open the preferences dialog which lets you customize all of the properties of &knewsticker; &reporting.bugs; Where do I find the &RSS; file for the news site XYZ? It's possible that the news site you're referring to doesn't provide any &RSS; file at all! Here's a short list of websites which provide thousands of &RSS; feeds, sorted by language and/or topic - for free: WebReference.com NewsIsFree MoreOver If you have found any interesting news sites which provide such a backend, don't hesitate to send them to &Frerich.Raabe; &Frerich.Raabe.mail; so that they can be included in future releases. Thank you! How can I make &knewsticker; open articles in another browser (⪚ Mozilla)? &knewsticker; will use whatever browser you have associated with the text/html &MIME; type; the default browser used for viewing &HTML; pages is &konqueror;. You can find the dialog for changing this association by opening the &kde; control center and browsing to KDE Components File Associations. &knewsticker; Program copyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 &Frerich.Raabe; &Frerich.Raabe.mail; Contributors: Malte Starostik malte.starostik@t-online.de &Wilco.Greven; &Wilco.Greven.mail; Adriaan de Groot adrig@sci.kun.nl Documentation copyright 2001, 2002, 2003 &Frerich.Raabe; &Frerich.Raabe.mail; &underFDL; &underBSDLicense; This chapter is intended to explain the various acronyms which have been used throughout the &knewsticker; documentation. If you feel any acronyms or terms are missing here, please don't hesitate to send an email to &Frerich.Raabe; &Frerich.Raabe.mail; so that they can be added. Thank you! RDF Resource Description Framework. A language derived from &XML; which describes metadata. Commonly used as a backend format for articles and other publications. For more detailed information on RDF files, you might want to go directly to the official page on RDF files at the World Wide Web Consortium. &RSS; The RDF Site Summary is actually an extension to the RDF language. Quoting the official &RSS; v1.0 specification: RDF Site Summary (&RSS;) is a lightweight multipurpose extensible metadata description and syndication format. &RSS; is an &XML; application, conforms to the W3C's RDF specification and is extensible via &XML;-namespace and/or RDF based modularization. &XML; The Extensible Markup Language is the universal format for structured documents and data on the Web. It's a derivative of SGML which fits the needs of the world wide web. You might want to check the the Extensible Markup Language page at the World Wide Web Consortium for further information. W3C An abbreviation for World Wide Web Consortium. Quoting the official homepage of the W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential as a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding &URL; &URL; stands for Uniform Resource Locator, a specially formatted string which can reference resources like images, documents and other things on the Internet. Please refer to the corresponding webpage for more detailed information on this topic. &DCOP; The Desktop COmmunication Protocol is a way for applications to communicate to each other. For instance, &knewsticker;'s configuration dialog uses &DCOP; to tell the applet itself about the current configuration. &knewsticker; provides an extensive &DCOP; interface, which makes it possible to control many of &knewsticker;'s functions from the commandline. For more detailled information on &DCOP; you might want to visit http://developer.kde.org/documentation/library/2.0-api/dcop/HOWTO.html for a complete explanation. &knewsticker; features a currently rather extensive, and steadily growing &DCOP; interface. This is not only used to communicate with other applications, it makes it possible to control &knewsticker; with a shell script as well. The more the interface is extended, the more useful it will become and the more flexible &knewsticker; will be controllable from a script. To use these &DCOP; functions you can either use the dcop commandline program or use the more convenient KDCOP application. Both provide the same functionality so it's actually just a matter of taste which program you prefer. :-) This chapter assumes that you're using the commandline program dcop. To access &knewsticker;'s &DCOP; functions make sure that &knewsticker; is started and then just enter something like this at the console: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker [function] If an error appears that tells you that dcop couldn't be found or executed, please check whether the file dcop exists in $KDEDIR/bin and make sure its permissions are set appropriately. In that command line, just replace [function] with the appropriate function name, &ie; type % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker updateNews to make &knewsticker; check for new news items and download them if necessary. In this section, all methods which are accessible via &knewsticker;'s &DCOP; interface are listed. updateNews This function forces &knewsticker; to update the internal list of articles (&ie; it queries the list of news sources which has been configured for new news) and downloads them when necessary. This also works if &knewsticker; is currently in offline mode. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker updateNews reparseConfig The reparseConfig command makes &knewsticker; reload its configuration from the configuration file. This function is used by the configuration dialog to talk to &knewsticker; but you can use it if you modified the configuration file by hand. The configuration file is saved in ~/.trinity/share/config/knewsticker_appletrc Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker reparseConfig setOfflineMode [bool] You can call this function to define whether &knewsticker; is currently in the offline mode (&ie; whether &knewsticker; should query the configured news sites for new news). Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker setOfflineMode true to enable the offline mode, or type % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker setOfflineMode false to disable offline mode. interval Returns the currently configured news query interval in minutes. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker interval 30 % scrollingSpeed Returns the currently configured scrolling speed. The returned scrolling speed is specified in pixels per second. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker scrollingSpeed 20 % mouseWheelSpeed Returns the number of pixels the scrolltext gets shifted per mousewheel step. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker mouseWheelSpeed 15 % scrollingDirection Returns an integer which corresponds to the direction the scrolltext is scrolling in: 1 = To the left 2 = To the right 3 = Upwards 4 = Downwards 5 = Upwards, rotated 6 = Downwards, rotated Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker scrollingDirection 1 % customNames Returns either 'true' or 'false', depending on whether &knewsticker; uses custom names for the news sites. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker customNames false % endlessScrolling Returns either 'true' or 'false', depending on whether &knewsticker; has the endless scrolling option enabled. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker endlessScrolling true % scrollMostRecentOnly Returns either 'true' or 'false', depending on whether &knewsticker; currently only scrolls the most recent headlines for each news site. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker scrollMostRecentOnly false % offlineMode Returns either 'true' or 'false', depending on whether &knewsticker; is currently in offline mode. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker offlineMode false % underlineHighlighted Returns either 'true' or 'false', depending on whether &knewsticker; was told to underline the headline which is currently below the mouse cursor. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker underlineHighlighted true % showIcons Returns either 'true' or 'false', depending on whether &knewsticker; currently shows the icon of the news site each particular headline was published at in front of the headline. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker showIcons true % slowedScrolling Returns either 'true' or 'false', depending on whether &knewsticker; has the slowed scrolling feature activated. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker slowedScrolling false % foregroundColor Returns the currently configured foreground color as a string in the format #rrggbb, where rr, gg and bb are two-digit hexadecimal values representing the intensity of the red, green and blue components in a scale of 00-ff. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker foregroundColor #804000 % backgroundColor Returns the currently configured background color as a string in the format #rrggbb, where rr, gg and bb are two-digit hexadecimal values representing the intensity of the red, green and blue components in a scale of 00-ff. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker backgroundColor #0030ff % highlightedColor Returns the currently configured highlight color as a string in the format #rrggbb, where rr, gg and bb are two-digit hexadecimal values representing the intensity of the red, green and blue components in a scale of 00-ff. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker highlightedColor #000080 % newsSources Returns the list of currently registered news sources. Note that this returns all news sources, not just the selected ones. In the output, each news source name will be printed on a line. Example: % dcop knewsticker KNewsTicker newsSources Freshmeat GNOME News dot.kde.org Slashdot.org % &documentation.index;