WARNING

This version 0.91 differs a lot from 0.90, it is less stable and breaks a lot of compatibility with older versions. Indeed, any client will need lots of changes. Also your config file needs an update and the store files are no longer valid. If you decide to use this experimental version, prepare to have a lot of trouble, but gain on the other side more speed and a new and pretty console_vt. Some features are still missing and some may vanish in the next version.

Content

Short Description
Requirements
Configure and Run VTQLserver
Hacking
*Disclaimer, Copyright & Warranty

Short Description

The VTQLserver package contains a server and clients for videotext access for Linux. The server stores the pages of several TV-stations for parallel reading and searching and can run all time as daemon, since it can interrupt the page reception and free the devices, whenever you need them.

You may run several clients in parallel i.e. search all videotext pages, and view them. The only limit is, that the server does not scale well and is not as stable as you may expect it for running it on a server machine. It is intended to be used on workstations, since I do not think, servers have TV cards nor do I have a server machine.

Requirements

hardware: -bttv chip -tuner supported by the kernel
kernel: It is well tested on 2.2.* and 2.4.* linux kernels, but note: The 2.2.* kernels have a broken TV/VT support, it sometimes crashes Linux. Maybe VTQLserver does not work on 2.5.* kernels since the new kernel uses a new video4linux driver (v4l2).

compiler & tools:
-perl
-g++ (I guess 2.95 or later) or other (recent) C++ compiler -STL must have basic thread-safety (usually okay) -libreadline, libcurses
-libpng (optional)

Configure and Run VTQLserver

This is a very brief howto. Read the manpages and the documentation starting at "html/index.html" for details.

-Make sure the bttv module is loaded or loads with correct permissions on vbi/video device access.
-Edit the file "/etc/VTQLrc" or "$HOME/.VTQL". The script "VTQLconfig" may support you writing this config file.
-Run "/sbin/service VTQLserver start" or "vts_start start" to start the server. -Call a client (e.g. "console_vt") to access the videotext database.

Hacking

The primary goal of the code is to train my C++ abilities. You may find stupid code and bad concepts, but I am still learning. You are invited to improve my code, write bugfixes, add a new feature or whatever. If you plan to debug my code, you may find it usefull to replace some files in the top directory by the version in the subdir ".dist/" and configure with "--enable-maintner-mode".

Disclaimer, Copyright & Warranty

VTQLserver MAY E.G. CRASH YOUR OS, DAMAGE YOUR HARDWARE AND GIVE UNAUTHORIZED PEOPLE ACCESS TO YOUR MACHINE. Do not test it in any critical environment. It may be not legal to use this software in some states.

This software is based on the great work of Edgar Toernig (froese@gmx.de), providing alevt.

The copyright holder is named on top of most files. The frequency tables are taken from Gerd Knorr (kraxel@bytesex.org)'s xawtv package. For all documentation this applies:
Copyright (C) 2000-2003 Matthias Kleinmann (Matthias.Kleinmann@gmx.de) All rights reserved.

For the whole archive this applies:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.