Introduction
License
Install
HowTos
Once upon a time I tried to download one month worth of a mailing list archive. I tried to do it with GetRight, but that program can only process up to 500 links in a web page, this archive had well over one thousand. At the same time, I learned that Tcl could download files, so I thought "How hard can it be to make my own program?"
So here is my little effort. It is supposed to download complete Web sites. You give it an URL, and down it goes on, happily downloading every linked URL in that site.
While it goes, it changes the original pages, all the links get changed to relative links. so that you can surf the site in your hard disk without those pesky absolute links.
A GetRight substitute, I have seen in Usenet that some people seem to think so, while I get a big ego boost from reading it, the fact remains it isn't.
A capital 'L', believe me, one capital per word is good enough for me.
Getleft doesn't support Java, Javascript, ... It only understands plain Html.
You can also check
Getleft's page at SourceForge,
at the moment there is nothing much to see there, but you can already file bug reports,
request support, suggest new features, ...
You can also subscribe to the mailing list they provide for Getleft.
Getleft is licensed under the terms of the GPL version 2. This means you can do whatever you want with the program, except claim that you wrote it yourself and change the license.
It also means that Getleft comes with NO WARRANTY whatsoever, in fact, I would be surprised if it happened to work at all.
For the full details see the General Public License. .topic GPL .title GNU General Public License
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: <$ head>(1) copyright the software, and <$ head>(2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
<$ head>0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
<$ head>1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
<$ head>2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
<$ head>a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
<$ head>b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
<$ head>c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.
<$ head>3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
<$ head>a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
<$ head>b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
<$ head>c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
<$ head>4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
<$ head>5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
<$ head>6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
<$ head>7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.
It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.
<$ head>8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
<$ head>9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
<$ head>10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.
<$ head>11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
<$ head>12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
Copyright (C) 19yy 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., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this
when it starts in an interactive mode:
The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
`Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.
<signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License. .topic translate .title Translating Getleft
So, you want to translate Getleft to your favorite language? Let my first word to you be:
THANKS!
or to put it in another way: Danke, merci, grace, obrigado, donkey shane, Mare-See, Key toss, M'goy, Graht-see-eh, Arigato, Spaciba, Gathee-oss, Tok,..., whatever suits you.
Translating the program is not hard, just boring, this is what you have to do:
Check that you have the latest version of Getleft, if you don't, the newest
labels won't get translated, you can look it up
at my web page.
Check on of the 'menus' files in the archive, you can use whichever you want, but if you are reading this, the English one, menus.en, is probably your best choice.
Translate all entries, this is the boring part, and the reason I thank you so much.
The '&' symbols are used to indicated Getleft where to underscore the menu entries, please use them only in the menu section. For example, if you want the 'F' in the 'File' menu entry to be underscore, you have to write: '&File'.
In the labels for the menus, you can also add a letter, so that the command will be invoked when the user presses Alt-Letter (or Command-Letter)
For example:
enterUrl "&Enter URL..." U
Save this file with the name 'menus.xx', change the 'xx' to the two letter code that identifies your language, 'it' for Italian, 'de' for German,...
After doing this, check the 'supported' file and add an entry for your translation, for example, if you are doing a German translation add:
de Deutsch iso8859-1
The first column is the two letter code, the same you have just used to name the menus file.
The second is the name of the language.
The third is the encoding used for the fonts needed in that language. We are
restricted to the encodings available in Tcl/Tk, to know which they are:
wish
% encoding names
X11ControlChars ascii big5 cp1250 cp1251 cp1252 cp1253 cp1254 cp1255
cp1256 cp1257 cp1258 cp437 cp737 cp775 cp850 cp852 cp855 cp857
cp860 cp861 cp862 cp863 cp864 cp865 cp866 cp869 cp874 cp932 cp936
cp949 cp950 dingbats euc-cn euc-jp euc-kr gb12345 gb1988 gb2312 identity
iso2022 iso2022-jp iso2022-kr iso8859-1 iso8859-2 iso8859-3 iso8859-4
iso8859-5 iso8859-6 iso8859-7 iso8859-8 iso8859-9 jis0201 jis0208 jis0212
koi8-r ksc5601 macCentEuro macCroatian macCyrillic macDingbats macGreek
macIceland macJapan macRoman macRomania macThai macTurkish macUkraine
shiftjis symbol unicode utf-8
At least that's what I get with the version I have.
Now launch Getleft, and you should see the entry for your language in the 'Tools' menu.
Try it, check that the underscores are where they should, that the spelling is good,... and send both files to me. If possible compress the files before attaching them to mail, that way we won't lose any non-ascii characters.
I'll will include all translations with the next release and gobble all the merit (Isn't free software great?)
Just kidding, put your name and e-mail in the Copyright section of the file menus you have created, and I will put you in the History file and in the credits. .topic install .title Installing Getleft
Getleft works on Windows, Mac Os X and Linux, I guess Unix variants will be fine.
As for CPU and memory, less isn't more, but you already knew that.
Windows users have two options to install Getleft:
In both cases, the procedure is similar, you download the appropiate getleft-setup-v1.2.exe, with or without Tcl/Tk, and double click on it to begin the install.
There is also a special Windows package, GetleftToGo, which is designed to be run directly from a USB stick or in case you don't have administrative rights to make a normal install.
It is a self-extracting archive, so simply extract it wherever you want and double-click on Getleft.exe to start.
Getleft doesn't work out of the box in Windows 95, you will need two things:
As usual in MacOs X you only need to drag the 'Getleft' file to your application folder or desktop and double click on it to start the program.
In order for Getleft to work, you need to have the command 'curl' installed, but that shouldn't be a problem since it comes with the OS by default.
As an experiment I have made a couple binaries for Linux, these include Tcl/Tk and all the Tcl extensions that you need, unfortunately, Linux binary compatibility isn't everything it should be, so they may or may not work for you.
Just like in the MacOs X version, you will get a 'Getleft' executable, just put it in whatever folder you want and double click on it.
If you have KDE installed, the binaries will try to make Getleft look like a KDE app, but if it looks like KDE gone crazy, you can change the theme in the 'Tools' menu.
If the binaries don't work, and you still feel like giving Getleft a try, the following instructions are for you.
Getleft is written in Tcl/Tk, an interpreted language created by John Ousterhout.
Getleft needs Tcl/Tk 8.4 or newer. It will, most definitely, not work with earlier versions.
In Linux you can get the version you have got by doing:
$ wish % puts $tcl_version
It may happen, specially if you are using Red Hat, that you don't have
wish. You can know by doing:
$ rpm -qa | grep tcl $ rpm -qa | grep tk
If one or both are missing you will have to install them, don't worry, they are in one of your distribution CDs.
If you need to download Tcl/Tk you can check at The Tcl developer Xchange
You may want to download ActiveTcl, since it includes all needed extensions.
You may have it installed already, open a Wish console and type
% package require tile
If it returns the version installed, you already have it, but if you don't, you will have to download and install it.
You don't really need this, Getleft will work even if you don't install it, but the icons will look better if you do. You can download it here.
To do the actual downloading Getleft uses the program cURL by Daniel Stenberg.
There are compiled versions of cURL for several operating systems, which you will be able to download at cURL's site
But usually, you won't need to download it, as it is included with most Linux distributions.
You can check which is the last version of the program at Getleft's home page .
In Linux you can choose the format of the package to download, there are 'rpm', 'deb' and 'tar.gz' packages available.
If you choose 'rpm' or 'deb' you are likely to know what to do with them.
For tarballs, you can install it in two ways:
In both cases, you can use the 'install.tcl' script to do all the hard work for you. The usage of the script is:
./install.tcl
In a graphical enviroment, a wizard will appear to help you with the install.
or in the console:
./install.tcl --prefix=/path ?--lang=LangCode? ?--proxy=proxyIP:proxyPort? ?--personal=1|0? ?--desktop=1|0? ?--menu=1|0?
Parameters:
For example:
./install.tcl --prefix=/usr/local --lang=es --proxy=armando:80
or
./install.tcl --prefix=/usr --proxy=192.168.0.1:80
or
./install.tcl --personal=1 --desktop==1 --lang=en
The desktop icons and menu entries are created by the Portland utilities but, since distros are still getting ready for this utilities, they may or may not work for you. As usual, comments are welcome.
Please note that you may have to log out and back in for the icons to work right.
In case the shortcuts don't get created, you will have to use a console and type either:
$ ./Getleft.tcl
if you installed it in you home directory, or simply:
$ Getleft.tcl
for a system wide install.
You can also set up desktop icon manually, in that case remember that the program to execute is
sh -f /path_to_getleft/Getleft.tcl
.topic toDo
.title To Do
Don't take this list too seriously, if you would like Getleft to do something not mentioned here, don't forget to let me know.
Loath as I am to admit it, this is the brainchild of Andres Garcia, you can contact me:
By e-mail: fandom@telefonica.net
or snail-mail
Andrés García
Las Mestas 7, 3-3B
Gijón 33204
Asturias
Spain
You may send all kinds of bug reports, Urls that don't work, patches, ...
Q: Register Getleft, but I thought it was freeware?
A: Getleft is indeed free software, licensed under the
General Public License, which allows you to
use, modify and copy the program in almost any way you want. But
that doesn't mean I can't charge for it.
Anyway, I am only asking for a voluntary donation of 10$ (or euros), even if you don't do it you can still use the program, it is not crippled in any way.
Q: How can I register?
A: You can make the donation in three ways:
Q: What benefits do I get from registering?
A: None really, only the pleasant feeling of doing the right thing and
ensuring that new versions of Getleft will keep coming your way.
Q: Why 10$?
A: It is a figure that I hope you will all be able to afford without
a second thought.
Q: But, why should I send you any money if I am not getting anything
extra from it?
A: Come on!, it is only 10$!, is it really worth arguing?