dailystrips - view web comic strips more conveniently

dailystrips [options] stripname...

This manual page documents briefly the dailystrips command. This manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program does not have a manual page.

dailystrips is a Perl script that gathers online comic strips for more convenient viewing. When in normal mode, it creates an HTML page that references the strips directly, and when in local mode, it also downloads the images to your local disk. In local mode, it is intended to be run from cron, and for your own private use only -- redistribution of the images may be illegal.

There are three files from which the definitions for comic strips can be read (aside from that specified with the --defs option, which is read right after the one in /usr/share/dailystrips). The shipped definition file is in /usr/share/dailystrips/strips.def and is read first. Next, dailystrips reads the system-wide override file in /etc/dailystrips.defs (unless --nosystem is specified), which can hold an updated definition file permitting up to date or locally-specific definitions without having to upgrade the whole package. Finally, the user's own override file in ~/.dailystrips.defs is read (unless --nopersonal is used). The last definition read has precedence. Updated strip definitions can be downloaded at <http://dailystrips.sourceforge.net/download.html>.

These programs follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (`-'). A summary of options is included below. For a complete description, see the README file in /usr/share/doc/dailystrips/.

-h, --help

Show summary of options

-q, --quiet

Turn off progress messages

--verbose

Turns on extra progress information, overrides -q

--list

List available strips

--random

Download a random strip

--defs FILE

Use alternate strips definition file

--nopersonal

Ignore ~/.dailystrips.defs

--nosystem

Ignore system-wide definitions in /etc/dailystrips.defs

--output FILE

Output HTML to FILE instead of STDOUT (does not apply to local mode)

--lite

Output a reduced HTML page

--stripnav

Add links for navigation within the page

--titles STRING

Customize HTML output

-l, --local

Output HTML to file and save strips locally

--noindex

Disable symlinking current page to index.html (local mode only)

-a, --archive

Generate archive.html as a list of all days (local mode only)

-d, --dailydir

Create a separate directory for each day's images (local mode only)

--stripdir

Create a separate directory for each strip's images (local mode only)

-s, --save

If it appears that a particular strip has been downloaded, does not attempt to re-download it (local mode only)

--nostale

If a new strip is not available, displays an error in the HTML output instead of showing the old image

--nosymlinks

Do not use symlinks for day-to-day duplicates

--date DATE

Use value DATE instead of local time (DATE is parsed by Date::Parse function, not available on Win32)

--avantgo

Format images for viewing with Avantgo on PDAs

--basedir DIR

Work in specified directory instead of current directory (program will look here for strip definitions, previous HTML files, etc. and save new files here)

--proxy host:port

Use specified HTTP proxy server (overrides environment proxy, if set)

--proxyauth user:pass

Set username and password for proxy server

--noenvproxy

Ignore the http_proxy environment variable, if set

--nospaces

Remove spaces from image filenames (local mode only)

--useragent STRING

Set User-Agent: header to STRING (default is none)

--retries NUM

When downloading items, retry NUM times instead of default 3 times

--clean NUM

Keep only the latest NUM days of files; remove all older files

-v, --version

Print version number

README, README.DEFS.gz (to add strips to the database), and README.LOCAL (for more details about 'local' operation) in /usr/share/doc/dailystrips/.

This manual page was written by Rene Weber <rene_debmaint@public.e-mail.elvenlord.com>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).