In this page you will find several important things that you must know in order to run NVoy RSS Ticker. Before you write to the author asking for more information, please make sure that you have read and understand all the information in this page.


Technical Overview

The goal of NVoy is to be able to run in as many different platforms as possible. While Qt framework library is easy to use and can be used in many operating systems, current licensing from Trolltech prohibits free use of the library on Windows systems. This is the reason why the author opted to switch to Java.

NVoy RSS Ticker version 0.2 onward was built using 100% Java code, including the skinning system, which are all Swing components. The experimental HTML viewer was built using the components from JDIC (JDesktop Integration Components) project. The JDIC project uses JNI (Java Native Interface) to connect to the system's default web browser, For Windows systems, the internal viewer will try to connect automatically with Internet Explorer if it is installed and set as the default browser. For most UNIX-like systems, you have to have Mozilla 1.4 browser (or later) installed if you want to use the internal viewer.

The experimental viewer is a Java application, and might be slower to start compared to native browser, in that case you can choose to use your favorite browser instead.


Fig. 1 NVoy icon in the System Tray Area

When you run the application, an icon will appear on the system tray. If the NVoy window is behind any other windows, just click this icon to bring it to the top of the screen.

If you are interested, version 0.1 of this software has only been tested on Linux, and requires Qt 3 (also KDE 3 as well). It comes in source code only, and you can find it in the download section.

System Requirements

NVoy was built using Java 2 version 1.4, because there are some capabilities that only exists on the 1.4 version. That is why you will have to install JRE version 1.4. For Windows, Linux, and Solaris systems, you can download it from the new Java website.

For UNIX-based users, beside Mozilla 1.4, make sure you have the following libraries installed as well:

Build from Source Code

For now, the source code of NVoy is available only from SourceForge's CVS server. To download the source code (for JDK1.4.x source code), use the following commands:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/nvoy login
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/nvoy co nvoy-src

For the new source code that (trying to) conforms to the new JDK1.5 features, such as generics, autoboxing, etc, use the following commands:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/nvoy login
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/nvoy co nvoy-srcj1.5

If the server asks for password, just press ENTER.
The build was carried out using Ant, a special 'make' tool for Java applications from the Apache Jakarta project. The preffered version is Ant 1.61 or later. Get it from the Ant website.

The build instruction below will assume that the build system is UNIX-based. Please change the directory names, etc. accordingly.

  1. Assuming that the source is located at /home/andy/nvoy, create a directory named 'lib' inside 'nvoy'
  2. Copy 'jdic.jar' file into the 'lib' directory you have just created
  3. In the 'nvoy' directory, type 'ant' to start building the program. You will soon have 'nvoy.jar' in the current directory
  4. To run it, you will need to copy the native files from the JDIC directory into the 'lib' directory,
    • Windows: IeEmbed.exe jdic.dll MozEmbed nspr4.dll packager.jar tray.dll WinMsiWrapper.dll jnlp2msi.exe
    • UNIX: libjdic.so libmozembed-linux-gtk1.2.so libmozembed-linux-gtk2.so libtray.so mozembed-linux-gtk1.2 mozembed-linux-gtk2
  5. You will also have to have mozilla 1.4 (minimum) or Internet Explorer installed on your system if you intend to use the default viewer. Edit the file 'runvwr.bat' or 'runvwr.sh' for the correct paths on your system.
  6. To run the software, type java -cp ./lib/jdic.jar:./nvoy.jar -Djava.library.path=./lib com.atlantis.nvoy.NVoy

On the first run, NewsFlash will create a directory on your home location and copies its configuration files there. Archived rss files will also be stored there.

Installation

NVoy RSS Ticker comes with binary installation package for Windows and Linux systems. The installation steps are standard for common users, so they should not pose any problem to users.

Below are the pictures for the installation steps:


Fig. 2 Welcome screen


Fig. 3 License screen


Fig. 4 Select install path screen


Fig. 5 Package selection screen


Fig. 6 Installation progress screen


Fig. 7 Shortcut screen (Windows only)


Fig. 8 Installation done

After the installation finishes, it is recommended that you open the 'runvwr.sh' or 'runvwr.bat' (depends on your system), and edit the paths that correspond to your particular settings (JAVA_HOME, MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME).

Configuration

This is a screenshot of the general configuration screen:


Fig. 9 General Configuration

To use the internal viewer, leave Viewer box blank, otherwise, to use your favourite browser fill the box with the path to your browser executable file (e.g: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe). The Refresh box indicates (in minutes) the time elapsed before the scroller should refresh its content. The Autosave RSS check box allows you to specify whether you wish to save the downloaded RSS content to a file after every refresh, or not. Proxy Username and password boxes should be filled only if you use proxy server to connect to the internet. Normally, these boxes should be left blank.

This is a screenshot of the channel configuration screen:


Fig. 10 Channel Configuration

The channel screen is quite easy to configure. It contains the channel names and their RSS URLs.

This is a screenshot of the site filter screen:


Fig. 11 Site Filter Configuration

To use the site filter, you should have a good knowledge of regular expression and Java's syntax of regular expression. The site filter is used to extract news headlines and URLs from a regular html file. The only site filter provided for now is for Google News sites. Since Google no longer offer RSS news feed service, NVoy would have to extract the RSS feed by itself.

NOTE: 'Uniform Site Title' is not trivial. It has to be a text that exist in the html news page(s). In the case of Google News, it's part of the title section of the html on the Google News sites.
You should change every '<' character in your regular expression to &lt; and every '"' character to &quot;. If you fail to do this, there's a chance that NVoy will stop working, because the XML parser will throw a parsing error.

This is a screenshot of the stock-tracking configuration screen:


Fig.12 Stock-tracking Configuration

To track a stock, all you need to know is the symbol for the stock (e.g.: MSFT for Microsoft, etc.) and the market where it is being traded. Currently there are up to 50 markets to choose from. Click 'Add to List' button after you finish. To start showing the stock info, click the appropriate button on the Control Panel. Each stock information page will be up for approximately 20 seconds before being replaced by the next screen.

This is a screenshot of weather information configuration:


Fig.13 Weather Information Configuration

To view current weather information for a city, you have to select and add the city name to the list. To start showing the weather info, click the appropriate button on the Control Panel. A scrolling screen showing the weather information for all cities in the list will start scrolling.

Contact Information

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please write to the author at infinixion@users.sourceforge.net

© 2004 NewsFlash/NVoy team - Atlantis Development Studio