 _____ _      _
|_   _(_) ___| | _____ _ __   BBC News Ticker
  | | | |/ __| |/ / _ \ '__|  Version 0.60, 27 December 2001
  | | | | (__|	 <  __/ |      Darren Salt 2001
  |_| |_|\___|_|\_\___|_|


What is Ticker?
===============

  Ticker is a simple news ticker that uses the BBC News Online ticker feed to
  provide its content and links to the full stories.

  On startup, Ticker will try to contact the BBC's ticker server (through a
  proxy, if you want) to collect news. After a few seconds, if successful,
  you will see a selection of news headlines being scrolled along in a
  window; else you will see a short message saying why no news headlines are
  shown.

  Ticker uses the CryptRandom module.


Controlling Ticker
==================

  With the ticker window visible and showing headlines, you can click Select
  on a headline to view it in your browser. A clickable headline is
  highlighted in blue when the pointer is over it; also, the pointer's shape
  is changed.

  The left-hand part of the ticker window contains the following icons:

    Back:     Select to send to the back, Adjust to bring to the front
    Close:    Closes the ticker window
    Iconise:  Toggles the visibility of the scrolly part of the ticker window
    BBC News: Use this to move the ticker window

  When the ticker window is closed, it is neither scrolled nor updated. When
  it's iconised, it may still be updated unless you've configured Ticker not
  to update when this is so.

  Clicking Select on the iconbar icon will open or deiconise the ticker
  window. Clicking Adjust will open the configuration window. (Equivalent
  options may be found in the iconbar and ticker menus.)

 Menus
 -----

  * The iconbar menu

    Nothing which needs explanation. (Feel free to try to persuade me...)

  * The ticker menu

    The 'Control' submenu contains some options which directly affect the
    ticker window: "Update", which will immediately try to refetch the
    headlines text; "Abort", which stops an in-progress update; and "Restart"
    which will refresh the ticker display and restart the scroller.

    There are two save options there, one for the link under the pointer
    (when the menu was opened), and one to save all of the ticker text and
    links (not those in deselected topics) as HTML.

    NOTE: The ticker will not be scrolled while this menu is open.


 When are the headlines automatically refreshed?
 -----------------------------------------------

  For the headlines to be refreshed, the "automatically update" option must
  be enabled and the configured "update after" time must have passed since
  the last fetch. Also, one of the following conditions must hold:

  * When the ticker window is open and the last headline has been scrolled
    out of view.
  * When the ticker window is iconised (and Ticker is configured to update
    when iconised).
  * When the ticker window is opened (or deiconised) from the iconbar icon or
    menu.

 Current status
 --------------

  The iconbar icon displays an "LED" which shows the primary status of
  Ticker. This is very much "traffic lights" in style:

    Red:   Headlines are unavailable for some reason.
    Amber: Headlines are being fetched.
    Green: Headlines are available.

  The ticker window, unless headlines are available, shows a longer
  description of the current state. In 'red' mode, this will normally be an
  error; in 'amber' mode, this will normally be some text which describes
  what Ticker's currently doing.


Using a proxy
=============

  Ticker can be configured to request the ticker data through a proxy.

  If you are behind a firewall, you may need to use a proxy server. If you
  don't know what the proxy's address is, ask your network manager or find
  out from your ISP.

  Ticker expects the proxy details to be entered in the format "host:port".
  You may find that you are given instructions which tell you to enter
  something like "http://www-cache.foo.bar:8080/"; for Ticker, you would
  enter "www-cache.foo.bar:8080".

  You may wish to use a proxy server on your machine, e.g. for WebCache
  running on port 80, you would use "localhost:80" or "127.0.0.1:80".

 Proxies which require authentication
 ------------------------------------

  Ticker has support for proxies which require authentication. Each time that
  you run Ticker, if it finds that the proxy requires authentication, you
  will be asked for your user name and password; Ticker will remember this
  until quit or a different proxy is used, and will ask again if the proxy
  rejects your user name or password.

  Both basic (insecure) and digest (less insecure) methods are supported; as
  of version 0.56, the basic support works and has been used Out There, and
  the digest support has been tested locally against a development version of
  Squid (current stable versions only support basic auth).

  If you find that you need NTLM authentication support, either add it
  yourself and send me the patches, or tell me. No guarantees, though :-)

 What do you mean, the proxy isn't available?
 --------------------------------------------

  If for some reason Ticker cannot connect to the proxy, it will inform you
  that it is bypassing it; it will then attempt to make a direct connection
  to the ticker server (subject to upstream transparent proxies). If you have
  entered any proxy authentication details, these will NOT be passed on.


Configuring Ticker
==================

  The configuration window is in four parts:

  * Connection

    + Use proxy
      - Default: no, no proxy

      This controls whether we're using a proxy, and tells Ticker where to
      find it. The format is "host:port"; http is assumed.

      See the section "Using a proxy" for more details.

    + Update every ... minutes
      - Default: yes, 15
      This controls the minimum time after the previous fetch was completed
      before which Ticker will automatically refetch the headlines.

    + Don't update when iconised
      - Default: no
      If this is enabled, then Ticker won't refetch the headlines when it's
      iconised.

    + Fetch 'low graphics' pages
      - Default: no
      The BBC News website has two pages for each story. One has lots of
      extra graphics such as logos, and the other has only those images
      directly related to the story. This option controls whether the
      high-graphics or low-graphics versions of news pages are fetched. If
      you are on a low-bandwidth connection or just don't want the images,
      you should select this option.

    + Don't update unless this variable is set
      - Default: null
      If a system variable name is given here, Ticker will check it before
      attempting to fetch the ticker data.

  * Startup

    + Don't fetch until first opened
      - Default: yes
      Delay the first fetch of ticker data until the ticker window is opened.
      (The "iconised" state is treated as "closed" for this purpose.)

  * Appearance

    + Scroll rate (pixels per second)
      - Default: 50
      Ticker will try to maintain this scroll rate as best it can.

    + Pause when
      - Default: never
      The ticker window will not be scrolled while the selected condition is
      true.

    + Highlight
      - Default: 8 (desktop blue)
      This is the colour used when highlighting a headline.

  * Position

    + Window width
      - Default: 100% of screen width
      This sets the ticker window width. The width may be interpreted as
      either a percentage or a number of OS units (normally, 2 OS units per
      pixel); additionally, you can tell Ticker to interpret it as so much
      less than the screen width (useful if you want a fixed amount of space
      for something else).

    + Alignment
      - Default: left, at the top
      This pair of settings controls the position of the ticker window when
      it is opened.

    + Always on top
      - Default: no
      If selected, the ticker window will always be on top of other windows
      (except for other foreground windows). It uses the "foreground" option
      provided in RISC OS 4.

    + Try these settings
      Clicking on this causes the displayed settings to be applied
      immediately (and temporarily).

    + Use the defaults
      Clicking on this causes the stored settings to be reapplied.

  * Topics

    The selected topics will be displayed in the ticker window after the next
    refresh.

    + Start up with the ticker window...
      - Default: open
      The ticker window will be opened in the requested state when you next
      run Ticker.

  The usual 'Cancel', 'Save' and 'OK' icons are present; also there is a
  'Default' icon which will redisplay the saved options if you click Select
  or the defaults if you click Adjust.


Command line use
================

  *<Ticker$Dir> -h > out/html
  *<Ticker$Dir> --html > out/html

    will cause Ticker to run in single-tasking mode, fetching the headlines
    and outputting a simple HTML page. It will work well in a taskwindow.

    Currently, this relies on the saved configuration. This is subject to
    change with respect to proxying and which topics are output.


Licence
=======

  GNU GPL version 2.


Contact
=======

  ds@youmustbejoking.demon.co.uk

  http://www.youmustbejoking.demon.co.uk/
  http://www.youmustbejoking.demon.co.uk/progs.apps.html#ticker
