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<article>
<section>
<title>bti</title>
<refentry>
<refentryinfo>
<title>bti</title>
<date>May 2008</date>
<productname>bti</productname>
</refentryinfo>
<refmeta>
<refentrytitle>bti</refentrytitle>
<manvolnum>1</manvolnum>
<refmiscinfo class="version"></refmiscinfo>
</refmeta>
<refnamediv>
<refname>bti</refname>
<refpurpose>send a tweet to twitter.com or identi.ca from the command line</refpurpose>
</refnamediv>
<refsynopsisdiv>
<cmdsynopsis>
<command>bti</command>
<arg><option>--account account</option></arg>
<arg><option>--password password</option></arg>
<arg><option>--action action</option></arg>
<arg><option>--user screenname</option></arg>
<arg><option>--host HOST_NAME</option></arg>
<arg><option>--proxy PROXY:PORT</option></arg>
<arg><option>--logfile LOGFILE</option></arg>
<arg><option>--page PAGENUMBER</option></arg>
<arg><option>--bash</option></arg>
<arg><option>--shrink-urls</option></arg>
<arg><option>--debug</option></arg>
<arg><option>--dry-run</option></arg>
<arg><option>--verbose</option></arg>
<arg><option>--version</option></arg>
<arg><option>--help</option></arg>
</cmdsynopsis>
</refsynopsisdiv>
<refsect1><title>DESCRIPTION</title>
<para>bti sends a tweet message to twitter.com or identi.ca.
</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1><title>OPTIONS</title>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--account account</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Specify the twitter.com or identi.ca account name.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--password password</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Specify the password of your twitter.com or identi.ca account.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--action action</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Specify the action which you want to perform. Valid options
are "update" to send a message, "friends" to see your friends
timeline, "public" to track public timeline, "replies" to see
replies to your messages and "user" to see a specific user's
timeline.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--user screenname</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Specify the user you want to see his/her messages while the
action is "user".
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--host HOST_NAME</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Specify the host which you want to send your message to. Valid
options are "twitter" to send to twitter.com and "identica" to
send to identi.ca.
If you want to send the message to a custom laconi.ca installation,
you should specify the API URI. For example identi.ca's URI is:
https://identi.ca/api/statuses
</para>
<para>
If no host is specified, the default is to send to twitter.com.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--proxy PROXY:PORT</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Specify a http proxy value. This is not a required option, and
only needed by systems that are behind a http proxy.
</para>
<para>
If --proxy is not specified but the environment variable
'http_proxy' is set the latter will be used.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--logfile LOGFILE</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Specify a logfile for bti to write status messages to. LOGFILE
is in relation to the user's home directory, not an absolute
path to a file.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--shrink-urls</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Scans the tweet text for valid URL patterns and passes each
through the supplied bti-shrink-urls script. The script will
pass the URL to a web service that shrinks the URLs, making it
more suitable for micro-blogging.
</para>
<para>
Currently, only http://2tu.us/ is used as a URL shrinking service.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--debug</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>Print a whole bunch of debugging messages to stdout.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--page PAGENUMBER</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
When the action is to retrieve updates, it usually retrieves
only one page. If this option is used, the page number can be
specified.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--dry-run</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Performs all steps that would normally be done for a given
action, but will not connect to the service to post or retrieve data.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--verbose</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Verbose mode
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--bash</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Add the working directory and a '$' in the tweet message to
help specify it is coming from a command line. Don't put the
working directory and the '$' in the tweet message.
</para>
<para>
This mode also does not report back any errors that might have
happened when sending the message, and it sends it in the
background, returning immediately, allowing the process to
continue on.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--version</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>Print version number.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--help</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>Print help text.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>DESCRIPTION</title>
<para>
bti provides an easy way to send tweet messages direct from the
command line or any script. It reads the message on standard
input and uses the account and password settings either from the
command line options, or from a config file, to send the message
out.
</para>
<para>
It's primary focus is to allow you to log everything that you
type into a bash shell, in a crazy, "this is what I'm doing right
now!" type of way, letting the world follow along with you
constant moving between directories and refreshing your email
queue to see if there's anything interesting going on.
</para>
<para>
To hook bti up to your bash shell, export the following variable:
</para>
<para>
<literal> PROMPT_COMMAND='history 1 | sed -e "s/^\s*[0-9]*\s*//" | bti --bash'</literal>
</para>
<para>
This example assumes that you have the
<filename>~/.bti</filename> set up with your account and password
information already in it, otherwise you can specify them as an
option.
</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>CONFIGURATION</title>
<para>
The account and password can be stored in a configuration file
in the users home directory in a file named
<filename>.bti</filename> The structure of this file is as
follows:
</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>account</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
The twitter.com or identi.ca account name you wish to use to send this
message with.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>password</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
The twitter.com or identi.ca password for the account you wish to use
to send this message with.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--action action</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Specify the action which you want to perform. Valid options
are "update" to send a message, "friends" to see your friends
timeline, "public" to track public timeline, "replies" to see
replies to your messages and "user" to see a specific user's
timeline.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>--user screenname</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Specify the user you want to see his/her messages while the
action is "user".
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>host</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
The host you want to use to send the message to. Valid
options are either "twitter" or "identica" to send to
twitter.com or identi.ca respectively.
If you want to send the message to a custom laconi.ca installation,
you should specify the API URI. For example identi.ca's URI is:
https://identi.ca/api/statuses.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>proxy</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
The http proxy needed to send data out to the Internet.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>logfile</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
The logfile name for bti to write what happened to.
This file is relative to the user's home directory. If this
file is not specified here or on the command line, no logging
will be written to the disk.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>shrink-urls</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Setting this variable to 'true' or 'yes' will enable the URL
shrinking feature. This is equivalent to using the
--shrink-urls option.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><option>verbose</option></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Setting this variable to 'true' or 'yes' will enable the
verbose mode.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
<para>
There is an example config file called
<filename>bti.example</filename> in the source tree that shows
the structure of the file if you need an example to work off of.
</para>
<para>
Configuration options have the following priority:
</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term></term>
<listitem><para>command line option</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term></term>
<listitem><para>config file option</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term></term>
<listitem><para>environment variables</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
<para>
For example, command line options always override any config file
option, or any environment variables.
</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1><title>AUTHOR</title>
<para>Written by Greg Kroah-Hartman <<email>greg@kroah.com</email>> and Amir Mohammad Saied <<email>amirsaied@gmail.com</email>>.</para>
</refsect1>
</refentry>
</section>
</article>
