[Xmltv-devel] Re: "program holes" at zap2it

[Grant T. <gta...@pi...>]

Jerry writes:

> I'm happy to announce I have zap2it confirms they have seen the
> problem of programming holes in the text listings and we should see
> the problem fixed by weeks-end. No guarantees, but they're working
> on it :)

Oh, goodie!

> Identifying and reacting in a more appropriate way when programming
> holes appear is on the XMLTV todo list so we're better prepared when
> this problem reappears.

Speaking of todo lists, there's a truncation issue with shows spanning
midnight that I think has been mentioned here already.  Is that on the
list?  Or is it a function of the zap2it listings buglet?

On an unrelated topic, would there be any call for a non-zap2it _na
backend?  For years, I used my own Yahoo! scraper, which could be
resuscitated quite easily.  It generated trivial html listings for
Plucker (or AvantGo) in a Palm, but adapting it to spew xmltv data
shouldn't be too hard.

My Yahoo! scraper does have the disadvantage that it's dog-slow, as
Yahoo is a page-per-show site, and I pause between pages to be
friendly.  On the bright side, I had to update it for website changes
maybe three times in two years, which is a better record than z2i
seems to have...

Anyway, should I revive it, or is there some other alternative scraper
project out there?

-- 
Grant Taylor - gtaylor<at>picante.com - http://www.picante.com/~gtaylor/
   Linux Printing Website and HOWTO:  http://www.linuxprinting.org/