Add note about installation on Debian systems.

[rawdog/.git] / README

diff --git a/README b/README
index 8134c5cddb84c69a5cef471d5960817377bfe556..fc974004632f701aebc32b82d3f184e72aaae798 100644 (file)
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -6,12 +6,19 @@ feed parser. It's just an aggregator; it's not a weblog authoring tool, nor is
 it an NNTP gateway, outliner, mailserver or anything else.  rawdog probably
 only runs on Unix-like systems.
 
-rawdog reads articles from a number of feeds and writes out a single HTML file
-containing the latest articles it's seen. It uses the ETags and Last-Modified
-headers to avoid fetching a file that hasn't changed, and supports gzip
-compression to reduce bandwidth when it has. It is configured from a simple
-text file; the only state kept between invocations that can't be reconstructed
-from the feeds is the ordering of articles.
+rawdog requires Python 2.2 or later. rawdog itself doesn't need any
+additional modules to be installed, but it uses distutils for
+installation, so if you're on a Debian system you'll need to install the
+"python-dev" package first.
+
+rawdog reads articles from a number of feeds and writes out a single
+HTML file, based on a template either provided by the user or generated
+by rawdog, containing the latest articles it's seen. It uses the ETags
+and Last-Modified headers to avoid fetching a file that hasn't changed,
+and supports gzip compression to reduce bandwidth when it has. It is
+configured from a simple text file; the only state kept between
+invocations that can't be reconstructed from the feeds is the ordering
+of articles.
 
 To install rawdog on your system, use distutils -- "python setup.py install".
 This will install the library modules that rawdog needs, and will install the
@@ -54,6 +61,23 @@ with different sets of options ("rawdog -u -w -c config2 -w" will first
 update and write with the default config, then read config2, then write
 again).
 
+"--show-template" (or "-t"): Print the template currently in use to
+stdout. This is useful as a starting point if you want to modify your
+own template: do "rawdog -t >~/.rawdog/mytemplate" with "template
+default" in your config file, and you'll get a copy of the default
+template to edit.
+
+There are also the following options which may only be supplied once
+(they're read before any of the actions are performed):
+
+"--help": Provide a brief summary of all the options rawdog supports,
+and exit.
+
+"--dir DIR" (or "-d DIR"), where DIR is a directory: Use DIR instead of
+the $HOME/.rawdog directory. This is useful if you want to have two or
+more completely different rawdog setups with different sets of feeds;
+just create a directory for each.
+
 You will want to run "rawdog -uw" periodically to fetch data and write
 the output file. The easiest way to do this is to add a crontab entry
 that looks something like this: