Last updated - October 4, 2001

REX News Web Sync Detailed Update

From Victor on the status of Virtual REX.NET:

"Version 1.1

* Acts as rex.net itsself by setting ip-adres of sync.rex.net to localhost and bypassing any existing proxy by adding sync.rex.net to overrides for local ip's
* Decent directory select window
* All HTTP headers and responses except for the pure content hardcoded in the program

Quite an improvement if I say so myself :) Everything is hardcoded now and you no longer have to set a proxy server manually (in fact it's no longer a proxy server). Just supply a "content.txt" file (example is available in zip file) and sync. The rest is in readme.txt

download here:
ftp://ftp.victorclaessen.nl/pub/vrexnet1.1.zip (Netherlands)
http://www.victorclaessen.nl/files/rex6000/vrexnet1.1.zip (Netherlands)
http://www.mercurio.com.mx/victor/vrexnet1.1.zip (USA)

hope this is of some use for you guys,"

And then, just a few hours later Victor wrote:

"I've just made some more improvements to VRN (this will become v1.3). It can now sit and wait in the systray, and there is a command line flag -tray to make it start in the tray mode. I will add an option for it to autostart sometime soon, but then I guess I'm out of idea's for the server. I fear I must now set to work on the content itself."

From Chris on his working Web sync process:

"I'm actually working on a web sync for the r6k. I've got it all working, extracting content from a DB and I'm in the process of looking for content. I haven't had much luck, but I've looked at both XML and RSS feeds. None of them, however, seem to send the body of the article, only the headline and a link. Some good resources are moreover.com, xmltree.com and the RSS section of DMOZ.org.

However, I am subscribed to a couple of feeds that email me information, and those often have some text.

So, I'm planning on using that as a starting point. Luckly, I already have some software that will convert those kinds of things into something usefull.

I'll probably post a link to a preliminary version of the site in a few days, assuming I don't have huge problems. Don't expect the initial content to be updated very often, or even at all."

And from Joseph, a "perl" of a developer:

" I dont know enough about the rex yet to do addins for it... but as far as perl goes I am very good... its part of what I do for a living. I am working on setting up a set of perl scripts to get daily content from the web and convert it wml, this will run as a cron job nightly. I then plan to have a front end that a user will select what content they like to have and have it generate a txt file that is compatable with VRN for downloading. Eventualy even have it work as the sync server also if that is wanted...

I hope to have the base of the code done by tomarrow night. If people have websites they want to see converted to wml for rex please send me urls. I am currently planning on starting off with weather, and world news. what else do ya want?"