HotSheet 0.91 alpha

[JohnMunsch@zwave.com]

It has been a long time since I shilled for my open source RSS reader
HotSheet so I thought I could post a little something about it here
without raising a ruckus.

HotSheet parses the usual RSS file formats and presents the news items
in a scrollable list somewhat like Novobot or Headline Viewer.
HotSheet differs in that it is:

 - Written in Java and has been tested at various times on Windows,
Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and AIX.
 - It implements its RSS channel store and item store as a separate
library which was designed to be ripped out for use in other Java
applications. If you don't like HotSheet's interface, build something
new that works from the command line or from a browser like Peerkat or
AmphetaDesk. There are three different demonstration applications now
to show the use of the library and the API docs are getting steadily
better.
 - It's open source (BSD style license). You can build on HotSheet or
create a new competing application. That includes commercial
applications.
 - HotSheet is installable with a _single click_ (!!!) for users with
Java Web Start already installed on their machines. Java Web Start
will be include as a standard part of the Java Runtime from Sun
starting with the next version and HotSheet acts as an excellent
demonstration of how easy distributing an end user program can be with
this technology.
 - HotSheet incorporates IBM's Bean Scripting Framework to give end
user's access to the news items from any of a raft of popular
scripting languages. This includes JavaScript, Python, VBScript
(Windows only), PerlScript, etc. No other tool has a feature like this
one!!! It's still not perfect. But if anybody wants to help, this
feature could set HotSheet head and shoulders above all the others as
users use custom scripts to filter out unwanted news or send out
alerts for critical items.
 - The process to get started with development is well documented in
the ReadMe.html that comes with the program. I've tried to keep it
trivially simple to attract hackers.

The homepage for everything is:

http://www.johnmunsch.com/projects/HotSheet

You can try out the program there and a link at the bottom of the page
will take you to the SourceForge page where the source is available.

John Munsch

P.S. Now I'll go away for another six months before shamelessly
promoting again.