Creating NewsWire Services

Creating NewsWire Services.

NewsWire Documents.
<META> Tags.
Index Documents.
Server Configuration.
More Information.

NewsWire Documents.

Creating NewsWire services is pretty straight forward since they are just HTML files that will be served by your HTTP server. Here is an example file:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META NEWSWIRE="Type" CONTENT="Wire">
<META NEWSWIRE="Keep" CONTENT="120">
<META NEWSWIRE="Url" CONTENT="http://your.server.com/newswire/doc.nw">
<TITLE>Today's News</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff" TEXT="#000000">

Sat Sep 21 22:00:02 UTC 1996
* Yeltsin had heart attack during Russian elections. 
* Doctor says surgery may be too dangerous. 
* Ghost of Papandreou hovers over Greek elections. 
* Israeli planes hit suspected guerrilla targets in Lebanon. 
* Tensions heating up in southern Lebanon. 
* India's former prime minister resigns as party chief. 
* Coalition parties mull successor. 
* Army manuals appear to condone human rights abuse. 
* VMI accepts women, ends 157-year school policy. 
* Clinton bans same-sex marriages. 
* Olympic bomb probe focuses on 12-volt battery. 
* Justice Department to probe CIA drug-peddling charges. 


</BODY>
</HTML>

Some important things to note in this file:

The title (text between the <TITLE> tags) will be shown in NewsWire's window title bar and will also be used in indices so make sure you have one.
The <META> tags are used to convey information particular to NewsWire. We will describe them in more detail below.
The text between the <BODY> </BODY> tags is presented on NewsWire's main window as is. CR/LF are converted to spaces. At this point no other tags are supported but if some are found they will be ignored.

`<META>` Tags.

All <META> tags used by NewsWire have the NEWSWIRE and CONTENT attributes. The supported values and their function are listed here:

NEWSWIRE CONTENT Function
Type Wire Indicates that this is a regular NewsWire document to be scrolled on the main window.
Type Index Indicates that this is a NewsWire Index document to be presented in an index window.
Keep Number of minutes Tells NewsWire for how long, in minutes, it should keep this document before requesting it again to the server.
Expires Date and Time in standard rfc850 format Tells NewsWire when should it request the document to the server again (note that the HTTP header attribute is also supported).
Url Full url of this document When a browser launches NewsWire as a helper application it will pass a file as parameter. With this information NewsWire will know where to fetch the document again when it expires.

Index Documents

Index Documents are very similar but in the <BODY> section they have a list of references to other documents:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META NEWSWIRE="Type" CONTENT="Index">
<TITLE>Your Index</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>

<A HREF="http://your.server.com/newswire/document1.nw">Your Document 1</A>
<A HREF="http://your.server.com/newswire/document2.nw">Your Document 2</A>
<A HREF="http://your.server.com/newswire/document3.nw">Your Document 3</A>

</BODY>
</HTML>

Index documents are presented in an index window where the user can choose one of the items:

Server Configuration.

To help your users install NewsWire as a helper application for their browsers a few steps must be followed:

Name your news wire document files with the extension .nw
Add the following MIME type to your server's configuration:
```
     text/x-newswire      nw
```
If you generate NewsWire documents on the fly with cgi scripts the first line of the output should be:
```
     content-type: text/x-newswire
```

Now you can include links to NewsWire services in your regular HTML documents by adding a line like this:

    <A HREF="http://your.server.com/newswire/document.nw">Your NewsWire Service</A>

When the user clicks on this link, if he has NewsWire configured as a helper application, he's browser will launch NewsWire with your document scrolling on the main window or in an index window if its an index document.

More Information.

If you have any further questions or suggestions please contact Xavier Llamas.

NewsWire Home.

`NEWSWIRE`	`CONTENT`	Function
Type	Wire	Indicates that this is a regular NewsWire document to be scrolled on the main window.
Type	Index	Indicates that this is a NewsWire Index document to be presented in an index window.
Keep	Number of minutes	Tells NewsWire for how long, in minutes, it should keep this document before requesting it again to the server.
Expires	Date and Time in standard rfc850 format	Tells NewsWire when should it request the document to the server again (note that the HTTP header attribute is also supported).
Url	Full url of this document	When a browser launches NewsWire as a helper application it will pass a file as parameter. With this information NewsWire will know where to fetch the document again when it expires.