Newsticker (now standalone)

Under development: PCMCIA, wireless, etc.
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MU
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Newsticker (now standalone)

#1 Post by MU »

This is a "widget", that can run in the system-tray or as an own borderless mini-window.

It displays headlines, and if you click on it, the corresponding website is opened in a webbrowser to read the full story.
You can add own feeds with different topics like "health", "finance", "linux" ...

Picture:
Image

It has an own simple RSS-news-downloader, but also can use the more advanced RSS-reader "liferea" ( http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=10127 ).

Download (60 kb, binary, examplescript, source):
http://dotpups.de/dotpups/Internet/MU-t ... ticker.pup

Options can be set with a grafical setup, see screenshot:

Image

Mark
Last edited by MU on Wed 16 Aug 2006, 13:16, edited 6 times in total.

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#2 Post by MU »

Update:
before the ticker reads the textfile, it executes "grabber".
This is a script, that can run several converters.

Currently included is a converter, that reads the liferea - feeds.

So you can use liferea as your main program to set up all your newsfeeds, and use my program to display the headlines in the tray.
If a headline looks interesting, click on "go" to read the full story 8)

You can run it from the dotpups-menu.

Liferea is available here:
http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=10127

Mark

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#3 Post by MU »

--
Last edited by MU on Tue 15 Aug 2006, 14:54, edited 1 time in total.

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#4 Post by MU »

Update:

the small button was difficult to hit, so now the text itself can be clicked to open it in the webbrowser.

The window now is borderless and "always on top", so you can place it whereever on your screen, and it will not disturb in the small defaultsize.

Mark

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#5 Post by MU »

fixed:
Last edited by MU on Tue 15 Aug 2006, 15:06, edited 2 times in total.

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#6 Post by MU »

Now the Newsticker has a setup-wizard, where you can click on the options:
- if to run as window or in the tray
- how old messages are allowed to be used in the ticker

With a right-click on the ticker, all news are shown, and can be watched in Dillo.

These tools are german and english.
To add your own language, simply make a copy of lng/en.lng (for example as fr.lng for french), and translate it.
The program will detect it automatically from your $LANG.

As Puppys Xdialog does not support UTF8 (

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#7 Post by MU »

I included a simple script, that can get news for you.
You can choose in the setup, if you want to use it, or liferea, or both.

My script is not as sophisticated as liferea, for example it can not handle the "age" of messages.

But it is a extremly small alternative.
It checks for new news every 15 minutes.

You can open the feed-list from the setup, too, it is a simple textfile, where you can copy&paste new links.

Screenshot:

Image

Mark

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#8 Post by MU »

oops, my own script had problems concerning Iso/Utf8.
I added now a small conversion-utility iso2utf.
EDIT: It seems I must add another check, for sites that are in UTF-already.
Will try to add that tomorrow.

Note, I also made a selfinstalling package for other Linuxsystems, it includes Puppybasic and Xdialog-Gtk2.

http://dotpups.de/dotpups/Internet/MU-t ... /allLinux/

Mark
Last edited by MU on Tue 15 Aug 2006, 14:57, edited 1 time in total.

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NewsTicker

#9 Post by jam »

Excellent work on this widget Mark! Can you include a source to filter economic/financial news only?
Jam

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#10 Post by MU »

Can you include a source to filter economic/financial news only?
I don't understand...
All you have to do:

middle-click the ticker to get the setup.
Choose "edit feeds".
Comment or delete the existing entries, and add your own ones.

Wait, trying google:
http://www.google.de/search?hl=en&ie=IS ... gle+Search

I found this for example:
http://asp.usatoday.com/marketing/rss/i ... POE=FOOTER
Click for example on:
XML Money Headlines
that is this link:
http://asp.usatoday.com/marketing/rss/r ... dId=money1

There they offer to use one of several readers, or a "native" format, that we need:
"Or subscribe to this feed using your favorite reader. XML"

If you click on that, you see the feed, that is right what we need.
http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/Usatodayco ... TopStories

Enter this link in leafpad, then close leafpad to restart the reader.

XML-feeds are what we need, not every site might support this format.
You can check it, by clicking on a rss-link in mozilla, it should contain words like <title> and <link>.

---------------
In liferea you can add feed-links with a right-click to a folder.

Is this what you meant?
Mark

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Finance/Economic Feeds

#11 Post by jam »

Mark,

Thanks for clearing this up for me and by providing some additional examples! At first I was under the impression these feeds were predefined by you the "widgetmaker" - now I understand they are editable, so I can take care of the rest myself. I skimmed over your prior posts too quickly - my mistake. This is a very usefull tool.

Jam
Jam

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#12 Post by MU »

Feel free to ask more :)
This "RSS"-stuff was somewhat confusing for me, too.
So I'll try to make it as simple as possible.

The feedback/question help to do that :D

When I'll have finished the setup-dialogs for all basic stuff and fixed all UTF-bugs and added a "time-handling" to my script, I will add a "category"-list to choose from, so that you don't need to enter links manually.
Thanks, Mark

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#13 Post by MU »

Update:
- fixed: UTF-detection
- new: all basic options can be set in the grafical Setup (see new screenshot in the first message). This does not apply yet to the Feed-list, this still uses the editor.
- fixed: erratic behaviour with broken Gtk-themes.

Mark

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#14 Post by MU »

- added setup-dialog for editor and webbrowser

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#15 Post by MU »

I found several other bugs, and corrected them.

I also added a timestamp-system to my download-script.

Now when you set in the setup "show only news from the last x hours" to "1", then you will see only the news downloaded in the last hour.

In case the ticker should not work, delete the folder /root/.MU-trayticker/feeds/ to reset it.

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#16 Post by MU »

fixed another issue:
when you removed a feed in the editor, the ticker still displayed it from the cache.
Fixed that now.
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#17 Post by MU »

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Last edited by MU on Fri 18 Aug 2006, 02:03, edited 1 time in total.

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#18 Post by MU »


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