news ticker...

[Calum]

i really like the windows 95 bbc news ticker. is there an equivalent application for X, which is available as a nice easy rpm? i can't find one by having a quick search and thought somebody might know of one.

in case you don't know, what i am looking for is a thing where it has a news ticker running across the top of the screen with headlines, which are hyperlinks to the article the headline represents. it is customisable regarding the types of news it displays and it updates regularly.

so, any ideas?
thanks...

[Void Main]

My guess would be that it would be something very easy to write. Do a network sniff and find out where it's gets it's data from (probably a data file on the BBC server for this) and maybe if I can find some time I'll try and come up with something, or someone else will first hopefully. :)

[Master of Reality]

KDE comes with a news ticker applet (KNewsTicker).....but if your not using KDE...it may be able to run independently.

[Calum]

well..... i don't have kde installed. i don't have the kde libraries or anything either (though i do have the qt ones).

here we go:

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[root@harvey ~]# apt-get install knewsticker
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package knewsticker


well, i will have to try and find an rpm of it then...

thanks for the tip.

[Ice9]

it's part of the kdenetwork metapackage, it should be there among the rest of the kde suite.

Just out of curiosity, are you using gnome or another window manager?

[Calum]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111 just look at this!!!!!!!1

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[root@harvey sources.list.d]# apt-get install kdeaddons
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
   OpenEXR (1.2.2-5.2.fc4)
   arts (1.5.1-1.0.fc4.kde)
   dbus-qt (0.33-3.2.fc4.kde)
   dmidecode (2.6-1.14)
   gnokii (0.6.10-1.2.fc4.rf)
   gpgme (1.0.3-1.2.fc4.rf)
   jasper (1.701.0-4)
   kdebase (3.5.1-4.2.fc4.kde)
   kdelibs (3.5.1-2.3.fc4.kde)
   kdemultimedia (3.5.1-1.1.fc4.kde)
   kdepim (3.5.1-1.0.fc4.kde)
   libmal (0.31-0.1.fc4.kde)
   lm_sensors (2.9.1-3.FC4.2)
   mDNSResponder (107.1-0.0.fc4)
   pilot-link (0.12.0-0.pre4.0.fc4.2)
   qt (3.3.5-11.4.fc4.kde)
   xorg-x11-xdm (6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2)
The following packages will be upgraded
   arts (1.5.0-0.2.fc4 => 1.5.1-1.0.fc4.kde)
   qt (3.3.4-15.4 => 3.3.5-11.4.fc4.kde)
The following NEW packages will be installed:
   OpenEXR (1.2.2-5.2.fc4)
   dbus-qt (0.33-3.2.fc4.kde)
   dmidecode (2.6-1.14)
   gnokii (0.6.10-1.2.fc4.rf)
   gpgme (1.0.3-1.2.fc4.rf)
   jasper (1.701.0-4)
   kdeaddons (3.5.1-1.0.fc4.kde)
   kdebase (3.5.1-4.2.fc4.kde)
   kdelibs (3.5.1-2.3.fc4.kde)
   kdemultimedia (3.5.1-1.1.fc4.kde)
   kdepim (3.5.1-1.0.fc4.kde)
   libmal (0.31-0.1.fc4.kde)
   lm_sensors (2.9.1-3.FC4.2)
   mDNSResponder (107.1-0.0.fc4)
   pilot-link (0.12.0-0.pre4.0.fc4.2)
   xorg-x11-xdm (6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2)
2 upgraded, 16 newly installed, 0 removed and 14 not upgraded.
Need to get 83.8MB of archives.
After unpacking 186MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

186MB just to install a news ticker?

the crazy part is, i might just say yes, i have this at the moment:

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Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda5              7998752   7278796    307088  96% /
/dev/shm                322864         0    322864   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda1              5336256   3868748   1467508  73% /media/winsux
/dev/sdb                 63600      3418     60182   6% /media/usbdisk1
/dev/sda1               242140         0    242140   0% /media/usbdisk


so i might have to try and do some sort of pruning.

[Calum]

i found a whole bunch of sites saying it is in kdeaddons for fedora, which sounds likely...

yes, i am using gnome. it used to have problems with my video card but they are almost 100% cleared up in more recent versions.

i would like to use xfce, as i think it is easier to use than gnome, but there are just one or two features gnome has, which are still missing in xfce. c'est la vie, eh?

[Ice9]

might be in kdeaddons for fedora but this is actually a copy/paste from the properties of knewsticker, snapshot taken from synaptic on my box

news ticker applet for KDE
This is a news ticker applet for the KDE panel. It can scroll news from
your favorite news sites, such as lwn.net, /. and freshmeat.net.
To achieve this, KNewsTicker requires the news sites to provide a
RSS feed to newsitems. KNewsTicker already comes with a selection of
good news sources which provide such files.

This package is part of KDE, as a component of the KDE network module.
See the 'kde' and 'kdenetwork' packages for more information.

[Calum]

it IS in kdenetwork! how irritating...

i ran knewstickerstub but nothing's happening. maybe i need to actually use KDE? how irritating.
more news as it happen's folks. stay tuned! we'll be right back after these messages.


(are you obese and hairy? then what you need is new goxypoxinol cream and tablets! et cetera et cetera ad nauseum...)

[Calum]

ok well i got it to run, easily enough from the KDE menu, but it didn't fit with my UI, it had a huge clunky window manager thing round it and it didn't start up when i logged out and in, saving the session as i went. This is probably all easily fixable, but after the 180MB install size, it's not really worth it.

this looks like the answer: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... up_id=1635
if it isn't then i am stumped. i can't believe something like this isn't in widespread use.

EDIT: ok, now had to remember and install some devel packages via apt to get gtk-config installed. successfully run configure with "./configure" and now see an error from "make", thus:

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[root@harvey bbcticker-0.3.1]# make
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I. -I/usr/include/gtk-1.2 -I/usr/include/glib-1.2 -I/usr/lib/glib/include -I/usr/X11R6/include    -g -O2 -c bbcticker.c
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I. -I/usr/include/gtk-1.2 -I/usr/include/glib-1.2 -I/usr/lib/glib/include -I/usr/X11R6/include    -g -O2 -c bbctickerdata.c
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I. -I/usr/include/gtk-1.2 -I/usr/include/glib-1.2 -I/usr/lib/glib/include -I/usr/X11R6/include    -g -O2 -c createpopup.c
createpopup.c: In function ‘CreatePopUp’:
createpopup.c:567: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘memcpy’
createpopup.c: In function ‘SaveChanges’:
createpopup.c:616: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘strncpy’
createpopup.c:625: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘memcpy’
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I. -I/usr/include/gtk-1.2 -I/usr/include/glib-1.2 -I/usr/lib/glib/include -I/usr/X11R6/include    -g -O2 -c parseticker.c
parseticker.c:8: error: array type has incomplete element type
make: *** [parseticker.o] Error 1


so, a little challenge, perhaps. what does make want me to do here?

[Void Main]

You can get it to compile if you use gcc32. Do the "./configure" and then edit your Makefile and change "gcc" to "gcc32", then "make".

I see where the data file is coming from using that source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/tickerdata/story2.dat

and wrote a turdy little php script to get that file and spit the headlines out:
http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/s/bbc.php

source:
http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/s/bbc.php?show=yes

[Void Main]

Actually I created a patch so it will work with FC4, the current compiler, and use firefox rather than netscape as the browser. I also created RPMs out of it and put it in my apt repo if you wanted to just "apt-get install bbcticker" or just download the RPM here:

http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/files/RPMS/bbcticker/

[Calum]

void main, that's really the bollocks. (and in american english [size="9"]TM[/size], that's something like "gee, that sure is swell!")

That is incredible! it's a completely functional bbc news ticker! the bbc simply need to put this rpm on their website since they don't have a linux version available.

in fact i hear they had recently stopped supporting *any* versions of this ticker due to software problems that it has running on windows 2000 and xp...