Subject: [TAG] Back issues of lg as pdbs

From: Alan Pope <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 11:56:12 -0000 (GMT)

Hi all,

I spoke with Thomas on IRC last night about this but it was late and I'm
not sure I made myself clear.

I'd like to be able to read the lg on my palm device. Now I know I can
click the TWDT link on the front page of the site, whereupon some magic
cgi-bin foo generates a pdb file for me to download. I guess this is
taking the text version of TWDT and generating the pdb on the fly?

My question is this. That process is fine and dandy for the current
release, but I'd like to read older issues on my palm. Can the pdbs be
made available on the ftp site?

I could convert the files myself I suppose which would probably involve
lynxing the TWDT text version of the file and then using "some tool" to
generate the pdb from the .txt file. However I just wondered if as that
particular wheel has already been invented, it might save some work?

Cheers,
Al.
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From: Ben Okopnik <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 07:19:12 -0500

> particular wheel has already been invented, it might save some work?

Nope, there's nothing set up. I'd suggest grabbing "bibelot" from
Freshmeat and converting whichever TWDT you'd like. Here's the simplest
way I can think of:

lynx -dump -nolist http://linuxgazette.net/issueXX/TWDT.html|bibelot -f -t twdtXX.pdb

where XX is the number of the issue. If you wanted to do a bunch of them
in one shot, you could even do a "for" loop:

for n in `seq $first $last`; do ... done

where $first and $last would be the issues that you want to convert.

* Ben Okopnik * okopnik.freeshell.org * Technical Editor, Linux Gazette *
-*- See the Linux Gazette in its new home: <http://linuxgazette.net/> -*-
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From: Ben Okopnik <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 07:26:09 -0500

> where $first and $last would be the issues that you want to convert.

"would delimit the range of issues", I meant to say.

---

From: Mike Orr <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 12:16:14 -0800

On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 11:56:12AM -0000, Alan Pope wrote:
> Can the pdbs be made available on the ftp site?

linuxgazette.net doesn't have an FTP site.  It now uses a portion of
the website for tarball downloads.

The biggest issue with putting Palm-format files in that directory is
they will be picked up by the mirrors.  We'd have to check with the
mirrors whether the bandwidth/size would be a hardship.  We also look
at how widely used the files would be.  The tarballs can be used on any
platforms with any OS.  Palm files work only with certain brands of
palmtops and exclude everything else.

-- 
-Mike Orr (aka. Sluggo), [email-masked]  ([email-masked])
   http://sluggo.kicks-ass.org/                  Cxu vi parolas Esperante?
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From: Thomas Adam <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 20:24:33 +0000 (GMT)

> palmtops and exclude everything else.

Hence I agree that generating them on-the-fly (talking of that,
congratulations, Ben!!) is a far better thing to do. And as it was pointed
out, a simple:

for i in $(seq a b); do ... done;

is all that is required.

-- Thomas Adam

=====
"The Linux Weekend Mechanic" -- http://linuxgazette.net
"TAG Editor"                 -- http://linuxgazette.net

"<shrug> We'll just save up your sins, Thomas, and punish 
you for all of them at once when you get better. The 
experience will probably kill you. :)"

 -- Benjamin A. Okopnik (Linux Gazette Technical Editor)

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From: Ben Okopnik <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 16:41:25 -0500

> palmtops and exclude everything else.

Actually, AFAIK, the Palm Reader is available for several different
platforms; certainly for Wind0ws, WinCE and both of the Linux distros
made for the iPaq. However, I agree that we shouldn't clutter our
tarballs with these things; that was the point of doing this stuff "on
the fly" for the folks who want it.

---

From: Alan Pope <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 22:00:40 +0000 (GMT)

> the fly" for the folks who want it.

Sure, and I wasn't suggesting that you should add pdb to the tarball or
the ftp server, just asking if the process is already there to generate
pdbs, why not make it available for back issues to?

Hence me saying why reinvent the wheel.

I don't have a problem downloading the TWDTs and converting them, just
thought it would be easier to use whats already there.

Cheers,
Al.