Re: [pimppa-users] I must be dense...

[Igor W. <iwr...@us...>]

On Wed, 24 May 2006, LASZLO ACS wrote:

> So, I guess this is one of those rocket-science tools where ya gotta be
> a whiz-bang genius geek or something. I do some searching (my soul and
> elsewhere), finally stumbling upon your PIMPPA home on the web.  I look
> at the site for a while, stumbling on a page that holds the "READ ME"
> document - GASP!  This looks really complicated...
> I guess I'll need to take a vacation to get this working...

As usually is the case with open source software, I made it for
my own use originally, and slick setup wasn't one of the most
important design criteria. :) For those who know their way
around Linux, its not too difficult. The text file SETUP included
in the original distribution archive (from pimppa.sourceforge.net,
for example) contains step-by-step instructions for the
installation starting from the compilation of the source code.

When it comes to distros like Ubuntu, I'm happy if its accessible
from them, but I feel its the role of the package maintainers
to make the installation procedure compatible with the general
way of doing things in the resp. distribution, or, to provide a
small piece of documentation how the package is actually
made to work there. I'm not currently personally maintaining
any binary packages for any distribution.

> I sure would appreciate a bit of assistance from someone having a sense
> of humor and patience while I continue to stumble through ...

One thing that comes to mind is that many drops of water have
passed under the bridges of the world since I originally coded
PIMPPA. It could be that there are sexier and easier to use
software packages available for news-harvesting today. I haven't
checked lately, I still run pimppa by CRON and I'm reasonably
happy with it. But it might be a good idea to take a look at the
competitors. I tried to provide some links on pimppa homepage
to other similar software, but I don't know if they're the
state of the art any more. :)


Cheers,
Igor