renko v0.2.4 This is the renko, a program to automatically download RSS files with enclosures, and the enclosures themselves... See Also: http://ipodder.org/ ============================================================================ GETTING STARTED Open the file renko.pl and set the paths properly. You need to specify ============================================================================ REQUIREMENTS We've tried to keep the requirements simple. You'll need Perl. If you are using Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, or any other *nix, it's probably there already. If you are using Windows, try to install ActivePerl... The modules that are needed are included in the 'lib' folder, so you should not need to install any additional modules. ============================================================================ GOALS Our main goal in this release was to get it out there, and see if it works. We've been using a variant of this for quite some time to do autodownloads of enclosures, and thought we'd help kickstart things. This code is not great, but it works. Please, re-write it, better... Think of it as a proof-of-concept, and if the concept works, run with it. I borrowed a bit from AmphetaDesk - thanks Morbus! ============================================================================ FEATURES We're using Perl's LWP module, and with the mirror command, it should cause renko to be a well-behaved client, checking Last-Modified headers to skip downloading files if they have not changed. We do this by caching the RSS files in the cache directory. We also keep a log of downloaded enclosures, so we only download them once. To re-download something, just delete the appropriate line in the log file. iTunes inTegration? If you are using Mac OS X, take a look at the script 'iTunes_Enclosures.scpt' you can find this on the iTunes_Script.dmg - if attached to the downloads folder it *should* load the files right into iTunes for you... Experimental for you, but it works for me! ============================================================================ USAGE To run renko, simply type: perl renko.pl (This assume you are in the directory which contains the renko.pl file.) Perl will start the program, read the renko.txt file, and do it's magic. It will print out it's progress as it goes. It makes the most sense to have renko run via a cron job, every hour, or every 12 hours, or whatever... The minimum should be once every hour! Be nice to people's servers! ============================================================================ TROUBLESHOOTING Make sure all paths are correct... Make sure line endings are correct... Make sure you have permissions correct on the files/directories... There are some issues to be resolved, there could be filename collisions, perhaps I'll fix this in the future... ============================================================================ FEEDBACK Bug reports, problems, ideas, comments and criticisms are welcome at (Using a subject line that includes 'renko' might also be helpful.) ============================================================================ THANKS Adam Curry, Morbus Iff, Gary Young, and others... ============================================================================ LICENSE This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details, in an included file named COPYING. If you have not received a copy of this file along with this program, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA. ============================================================================ COPYRIGHT Copyright (C) 2004 - Pete Prodoehl http://rasterweb.net/raster/ $Id: README,v 1.3 2004/09/08 17:22:00 pete Exp pete $