Netcomics is set of perl modules with GUI and command-line front
ends all written in perl.  Both the command-line & GUI interface allow
you to retrieve comic strips from the Web that are continuously being
updated each day.  Netcomics utilizes a modular set of library perl
scripts that provide it information on where to find each specific
comic strip.  It can be run as a cron job or whenever you'd like. 

In order to download comics from the Internet, you will need to either
have the appropriate Perl modules, or a command-line program that can
do it.  A commonly used command-line URL fetcher is wget.

If you don't have a command-line program that can retrieve URL's,
then to run netcomics, the following CSPAN perl modules are required:
HTML-Parser, libwww-perl, URI, MIME-Base64, and MD5.  You can retrieve
these as rpms or as sources from the netcomics hompage.  See the
manpage for CPAN for help on a way to automatically download these
modules, or goto http://cpan.perl.org/, or get the rpms from the
netcomics homepage (see below). To use the comicpage script, you'll
also need to have GtkPerl installed.  To use the show_comics script,
you'll also need to have perlTk installed. 

To install real quick: % perl Makefile.PL; make; make install
See INSTALL for complete instructions on how to setup netcomics.

See the manpage for netcomics & comicpage for information on how to
use them.  HTML versions of the manpages are also created under the
doc directory.

See the doc/Comic_Modules-HOWTO.html file to learn how to add your
own comics modules.  See doc/Modify_Webpage_Creation-HOWTO.html
for how to personalize the webpages that can be created with the
-w & -W options to netcomics.

This program does not have to be specific to just comic strips.  If
you have an idea on how it could be implemented more generally for
other applications, please let us know.  Unimplemented modules are
available in the source tree under lib/disabled.  So before making
additions, be sure to checkout the current cvs source code or download
the source or the source package if you've installed this from an rpm
or debian package.

Send an email to any of the main authors listed in the AUTHORS file
if you wish to submit your own netcomics lib modules for addition in
the next release, or to request a specific comic you know the website
at which it exists to be added.  Of course, bug reports and suggested
enhancements are always welcome.

Make sure you include the version of netcomics you are running when
sending in a bug report!

Visit the netcomics homepage:
http://netcomics.sourceforge.net/

mirror:
http://www.cs.rose-hulman.edu/~hochstrb/netcomics/

Future updates are announced on and/or uploaded to:
* http://cpan.org
* http://www.freshmeat.net
* http://www.linuxapps.com
* http://www.linuxberg.com
* the Linux Software Map (http://www.execpc.com/lsm/)
* Netcomics Announce List <netcomics@lists.sourceforge.net>

    Copyright (C) 1999-2001 Ben Hochstedler & Elliot Glaysher

    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
    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