phpgrabcomics-announce Mailing List for phpGrabComics (Page 2)

Hi all,
phpGrabComics 1.5 is now available for beta testing at
http://www.baravalle.it/phpGrabComics/phpgrabcomics-1.5beta.zip

phpGrabComics 1.5 includes several improvements and updates many modules.

The main changes are:
-new comics included, as usual (-:
-updated comic modules (but not all the comics have been checked yet)
and added the author in many cases (not all yet)
-support for RSS export of comic information

Official public release is scheduled in 1/2 weeks, but might still be
beta level. phpGrabComics 1.5 has been rewritten in many parts and not
yet tested enought.

To install, just decompress and customise inc/config.inc.

Testing and comments are welcome,
	Andres

____________

Andres Baravalle
http://www.baravalle.it

____________

Gli uomini d'azione sono poco pratici.
La stessa azione li allontana dalla loro meta.
         Paco Ignacio Taibo I

Hi all,
to address copyright concerns, phpGrabComics will stop providing "easy"
urls that point to cached copy of daily comics.

This is the current status:
- Easy urls are not publicised any more in any part of the web site
- phpGrabComics for nuke, that was using easy urls in its first
versions, has been updated
- During a transition time, phpGrabComics will still provide easy urls.
At the present time, phpGrabComics is redirecting to the original comic
strip whenever possible and serving the cached copy in the other cases.

Next steps:
- phpGrabComics will not serve any more cached comics through easy urls
- a JavaScript client might be developed.
- Use of easy urls with redirect might be maintained after discussion in
the developers community, to ensure that it is legal

Comments are welcome,
	Andres

Hi everyone,
an update for phpGrabComics for nuke has been released: the last version 
  included bugs in the creation of the required tables.

Moreover, you will notice that the on-line version of phpGrabComics has 
removed all the full size comics, publishing only miniatures of the comics.

Users are now required to use a phpGrabComics client to access the 
comics - the phpGrabComics site works as a "locator" of comics.

Only the administrators of the site still see the full images instead of 
the miniatures. This was required by concerns on copyright infringement, 
that should now be addressed.

The layout of the new comic pages is not exactly exiting, but includes 
RSS feeds for each comic, without hard-coding the URL.

A new version of phpGrabComics server will be released between December 
and January, based on the version currently on-line.

Comments/Suggestions?

	Andres
____________

Andres Baravalle
http://www.baravalle.it

____________

Gli uomini d'azione sono poco pratici.
La stessa azione li allontana dalla loro meta.
         Paco Ignacio Taibo I

Hi everyone,
after one year the first real new version of phpGrabComics for nuke is 
released.

There has been concern and questions related to the possible copyright 
infringement of phpGrabComics.

The new version of phpGrabComics for Nuke uses a phpGrabComics site 
(default site, http://baravalle.it/phpGrabComics) only to *discover* the 
URLs of the comics.

The main advantages for the users are that:
-they are linking the comic from the original web site, they are not 
linking to a copy of the comic
-a copy of the comic will be saved in phpGrabComics folder, so that if 
someone requests the comic, it will be saved

The main disadvantage is that you will have not any more access to all 
the comics, but only to the comics that have not server side checks in 
the original site. But I suppose that is a minor disadvantage.

If you want to download all the comics or other comics, the best options 
are pyGrabComics or the phpGrabComics full installation.

The code is quite experimental (developed and tested in only half a day) 
- as it is clear even by the version number... use it at your own risk!

Any comments/requests? Please let me know if you tried the new version.

	Andres

____________

Andres Baravalle
http://www.baravalle.it

____________

Gli uomini d'azione sono poco pratici.
La stessa azione li allontana dalla loro meta.
         Paco Ignacio Taibo I

Hi all,
this is to give an update of the current status of phpGrabComics and of 
the development directions of phpGrabComics and its ports for the next 
months.

The bigger modification is an improved support for content syndication.

At the present time, phpGrabComics is providing 3 different XML feeds:

#1: the original RSS feed, available at 
http://www.baravalle.it/phpGrabComics/phpgrabcomics.xml, and used by 
phpGrabComics for nuke. This feeds points to cache copies of the comics 
made by the phpGrabComics site.

#2: the new XML, developed at the beginning of 2004, providing all the 
information to download any comic from the original site, available at 
http://www.baravalle.it/phpGrabComics/webcomics.xml, and used by 
pyGrabComics.

#3: the new RSS, that is based on RSS 2.0 and allows to download the 
comics directly from the original sites. This includes a selection of 
70% circa of the comics, the ones provided by web sites that do not 
enforce a control a control before sending the comics. It is available 
at 
http://www.baravalle.it/phpGrabComics/phpgrabcomics.xml?from_real_site=True.

The original XML feed (#1) will be gradually discontinued. There are 
legal objections to that service, while the other 2 services should not 
have legal problems.

For what regards phpGrabComics and ports:
-a new version of pyGrabComics has been published today. Still alpha 
level, with some bug corrections.
-the work on phpGrabComics server concentrates and will concentrate on 
making feeds available to other applications.
-phpGrabComics for nuke will be updated to use the feeds of type #3.
-a new system will be developed for personal web sites hard-linking to 
phpGrabComics comics. It will be a javascript application that will 
point to the original web site of the comic.

The main aim is to stop having phpGrabComics web site as provider of 
comics and making it provide the location of comics. At the same time, 
phpGrabComics and its ports will include an explain to the user of 
proper and improper use of the software.

Users are free to use phpGrabComics for downloading images for their own 
pleasure and use, but making them available to the wide public might be 
questionable.

The development of pyGrabComics is oriented to allow standard desktop 
users to automatically download comics form the original web site.

pyGrabComics is not too hard to install, and allows to automatically and 
quickly download the comics. RSS readers, like Thunderbird or RSS 
Bandit, are a good option to read the comics, but do not store locally a 
copy of the strip, that is what (I suppose) many users want.

phpGrabComics server is not suitable for that kind of users, first of 
all because PHP and a web server are not sufficient for it: 
phpGrabComics without a cron job that starts the download of the comics 
is not the best idea. At the present time, if you cannot use a cron job 
to download your comics, you can force phpGrabComics to check if a new 
version of the strip is available (option static_copy in file 
config.inc), but that is not the best option.

Comments and suggestions are really welcome.

Cheers,
	Andres

____________

Andres Baravalle
http://www.baravalle.it

____________

Gli uomini d'azione sono poco pratici.
La stessa azione li allontana dalla loro meta.
         Paco Ignacio Taibo I

Hi,
phpGrabComics is now ready for beta testing.

Major changes include:
- New comics, including megatokio, the cynic, all the comics from the 
Clarin! and 63 new comics by Darin Quayle.
- Corrected or removed comic classes that were not more working.
- Corrected netscape/mozilla bug in displaying images (some versions 
could not display images not sending the HTTP header).
- Desktop creator, for building custom desktops.
- Rewrote XHTML for not using layout tables and transition to XHTML 1.1

You will find the beta at 
http://baravalle.it/phpGrabComics/phpgrabcomics-beta.zip (916 kb).

The final version will be, for the first time, shipped even in RPM format.

If someone is interested in participating to the project, please write 
me back explaining what you would be interested to do.

Any comments on the beta or on the project status are welcome.

	Andres

____________

Andres Baravalle
http://www.baravalle.it

____________

Gli uomini d'azione sono poco pratici.
La stessa azione li allontana dalla loro meta.
         Paco Ignacio Taibo I

Hi,
phpGrabComics is now including a new desktop creator.

It is a quite simple (but I think interesting) feature that was
suggested (by Richard Stallman!) when I asked phpGrabComics to become a
GNU package. You can find it at
http://www.baravalle.it/phpGrabComics/desktop_creator.php

Moreover, phpGrabComics has now a better (still not sufficient)
documentation and (finally) has an installation program.

phpGrabComics can now be installed (on *nix) running "configure" and "make".

Other recent improvements include:
-PDA compatibility
-transition to XHTML strict instead from XHTML loose
-gzip encoding
-random comic module

Any comments are welcome.

	Andres

____________

Andres Baravalle
http://www.baravalle.it

____________

Gli uomini d'azione sono poco pratici.
La stessa azione li allontana dalla loro meta.
         Paco Ignacio Taibo I

Hi,
phpGrabComics is now including a new desktop creator.

It is a quite simple (but I think interesting) feature that was
suggested (by Richard Stallman!) when I asked phpGrabComics to become a
GNU package. You can find it at
http://www.baravalle.it/phpGrabComics/desktop_creator.php

Moreover, phpGrabComics has now a better (still not sufficient)
documentation and (finally) has an installation program.

phpGrabComics can now be installed (on *nix) running "configure" and "make".

Other recent improvements include:
-PDA compatibility
-transition to XHTML strict instead from XHTML loose
-gzip encoding
-random comic module

Any comments are welcome.

	Andres

____________

Andres Baravalle
http://www.baravalle.it

____________

Gli uomini d'azione sono poco pratici.
La stessa azione li allontana dalla loro meta.
         Paco Ignacio Taibo I

All I get is half graphics called comicsname-test ..

Hi all,
the new version of phpgrabcomics will be released in the 2nd or 3rd week of 
december.

It will support at least 146 comics, all working, that means 80 more comics 
than the previous public version. Some users and developers are already 
testing it and reporting bugs.

-if you have any new contributions, this is the time to send them, to be 
included in next release
-if you have comments about your usage of phpgrabcomics, I will be very 
interested to hear them
-if you have any modifications of phpnuke port, they are welcome. it is 
quite basic and I have not modified it in nay way except of a HTML error

Before releasing the new version, I would like to thank all the developers 
that sent comments, bug reports, code, graphics.

     Andres


____________

Andres Baravalle
http://www.baravalle.it

____________

Gli uomini d'azione sono poco pratici.
La stessa azione li allontana dalla loro meta.
         Paco Ignacio Taibo I