What is comic2email?
comic2email will grab web comic files and squirt them towards an email
address. Written by Stephen Parkes (sparkes) formerly of the lugradio
team (http://lugradio.org - get your bi-monthly rants) and currently
maintainer of the Autistic GNU/Linux User Group http://autisticlug.org
and European Union based geekwear site http://nerd.ws
Web Page
A web page for comic2email exists at zx-81.com Including almost instructions and full configuration for almost 3000! web based comics making comic2email the best of breed.
About this release
'v0.3 - Clean and Tidy' replaces 'v0.2 - Sensible Web Server'
See CHANGELOG for reasons
Requirements.
Python, local mail server and a net connection should be enough.
A standard nix installation should include all you need. Tested on
Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux but should be good for all GNU/Linux, BSD,
and other free nixes. Using non-free operating systems is at your
risk only ;-) although untested OSX is presumed to work fine.
Usage.
Edit the config file and run. Normal usage would be to add a cron job
to update comics as required daily.
Command Line Options.
`c2e --help`
Comics.
The standard distribution includes a config file to download the
following comics, User Friendly, Penny Arcade and PC Weenies to get
you started.
Adding new comics takes the author 2 mins on average.
Config file placement.
Your edited config file should be placed in ~/.comic2email/
DEFAULT section.
edit the email address to the one you want comics to be sent to.
Example comic section.
This example is based on PC Weenies one of the funniest regular sites
in existance. It's a rare day when a new PC Weenies doesn't raise a
smile.
[PC Weenies]
url=http://www.pcweenies.org/
base=http://www.pcweenies.org/
homepage=http://www.pcweenies.org/
reg=(images/toons/pcweenies_.*.(jpg|png|gif))
shop=http://www.cafepress.com/pcweenies
title=PC Weenies
url: The url to the lastest release
base: (optional) Base for relative urls returned by regexp
homepage: Link to the comics homepage
reg: Regular expression to extract direct uri from url
shop: (optional) shop or donate link for the comic author
title: Title of the comic
Adding additional comics
Add another section to the config file ;-) Simple regexps can be found
for most web comics, tested and added to comic2email in 2 minutes. A
directory of can be found at zx-81.com
Support web comics.
Most of the current crop of web comics use online shops to support the
authors, artists and others involved in created this art form. Please
buy goods from these shops to support the comics you love and pay for
some of the bandwidth we are using to read these comics.
What are the links in the email?
One to the original website, one to a shop or donate link (where
available) to support the creatives responsible for the comic and one
to my site where you can choose to buy me something nice to say thanks
Why not include comic X in the distribution? Bandwidth. I don't want everybody who downloads comic2email to grab 200 comics everyday and not read them. That would be unfair to the people who work so hard on the strips. If it's a little work to add a comic (even if it's just cut and paste from the site) people will only download what they want to read and will support the sites better.