XMLTV 0.5.33

Gather television listings, process them and organize your viewing.
XMLTV is a file format for storing TV listings, defined in xmltv.dtd.
Then there are several tools to produce and process these listings.

Please see doc/QuickStart for documentation on what each program does,
and xmltv.dtd for documentation on the file format.

* Changes in this release (0.5.33)

tv_grab_na - gone, replaced by tv_grab_na_dd, see below

tv_grab_na_icons - a new script to grab icons from Zap2IT
                 - requires WWW::Mechanize

tv_grab_na_dd - updated to include icon links downloaded with tv_grab_na_dd
              - changed handling of programme copyright dates and repeats
              - changed format of episode-num in output
              - fixed warnings seen in Sourceforge bug #935843
              - some tidyups to configuration

tv_grab_se - added support for Viasat subscription channels (based on
             patch from Andrey Nauman)
           - other fixes (same author)

tv_grab_fr - properly installable after it was accidentally broken in
             the last release

tv_grab_de_tvtoday - fixed for upstream site changes

tv_grab_pt - cleanly handle 'site unavailable' (which seems to be the
             state at the moment)

tv_grab_no - fixed for upstream site changes and bugs

tv_grab_hu - fixed for upstream site changes

tv_grab_uk_rt - fixed for upstream site changes

tv_grab_na is now officially retired and is no longer included in the
distribution. tv_grab_na_dd is a faster and more functional replacement.

** Notes on the new U.S./Canadian Grabber. (tv_grab_na_dd)

tv_grab_na_dd users are strongly encouraged to read the man page for
the new grabber.  Don't forget about the --old-chan-id switch if you
depend on tv_grab_na channel IDs.

Thanks to Tribune Media Services for making the new grabber possible.
Data from the new grabber is more detailed and download times are
greatly reduced.

* Installation

% perl Makefile.PL
% make
% make test
% make install

To install in a custom directory, replace the first line with
something like

% perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/wherever/

The system requirements are perl 5.6 or later, and a few Perl modules.
You will be asked about some optional components; if you choose not to
install them then there are fewer dependencies.  The full list of
needed modules is:

XML::Parser 2.34
XML::Twig 3.10
XML::Writer 0.4.6
Date::Manip 5.42a 
LWP 5.65
Memoize (included with perl 5.8 and later)
Storable (included with perl 5.8 and later)

HTML::TreeBuilder       (for many of the grabbers)
HTML::Parser 3.34       (for some of the grabbers)
Tk::TableMatrix         (if you want to run tv_check)
CGI                     (if you want to run tv_pick_cgi)
Text::Kakasi            (if you want to run tv_grab_jp)
XML::LibXML             (if you want to run tv_grab_se)
SOAP::Lite              (if you want to run tv_grab_na_dd)
HTML::TableExtract      (if you want to run tv_grab_no)
HTML::LinkExtractor     (if you want to run tv_grab_no)
WWW::Mechanize          (if you want to run tv_grab_na_icons)

Where a version number is given any later version also ought to work.
You may have difficulty with the XML modules on perl 5.8.0 - if so
send mail to the xmltv-users list.  Other perl versions should be OK.

The following modules are recommended, but the software still works
without them:

Term::ProgressBar                (displays pretty progress meters)
PerlIO::gzip (for perl 5.8+)     (makes tv_imdb a bit faster)
Lingua::Preferred 0.2.4          (helps with multilingual listings)
Unicode::String                  (non-ASCII chars in LaTeX output)
Lingua::EN::Numbers::Ordinate    (not really needed, to be honest)

And the Log::TraceMessages module is useful for debugging, but not
needed for normal use.

All of these can be installed with tarballs downloaded from CPAN or
(hopefully) using the CPAN shell program: 'perl -MCPAN -e shell', then
'install XML::Twig' and so on.  But you may find it easier to search
for packaged versions from your OS vendor or others - places which
distribute a packaged version of xmltv will often provide the modules
it needs too.

* Author and copying

This is free software distributed under the GPL, see COPYING.  But if
you would like to use the code under some other conditions, please do
ask.  There are many who have contributed code, they are credited in
individual source files.

There is a web page at
<http://membled.com/work/apps/xmltv/> and a Sourceforge
project 'XMLTV'.  There are some mailing lists:

    xmltv-announce@lists.sourceforge.net
    xmltv-users@lists.sourceforge.net
    xmltv-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

You ought to subscribe to the announce list at least.  Contact the
users list with most problems.

-- Ed Avis, ed@membled.com, 2004-05-08
$Id: README,v 1.110 2004/05/08 10:17:11 epaepa Exp $
