# The &kscore; Handbook

Jonathan
Singer

    jsinger@leeta.net

2000
Jonathan Singer
2001-06-14
0.01.00

&kscore; is an applet for the &kde; 2.x panel to track sports scores.

KDE
KScore
Sports
score
applet

## Introduction

&kscore; at work
&kscore; at work
&kscore; at work
&kscore; at work
&kscore; at work
&kscore; at work

Nowadays, there's a lot of people telling you what stereotypes free software users should conform to. Geeks like Lego. Hackers like guns. Well, I like hockey. And on the rare occasions when my beloved Islanders win a game, I want to know about it immediately.

&kscore; is an applet for the &kde; 2.x panel to track sports scores. It downloads scores from Excite, including all major American pro and college sports, as well as many minor leagues and the top European soccer leagues.

&kscore; was written by Jonathan Singer jsinger@leeta.net, and is based on the wmScoreboard dockapp for WindowMaker, by Todd Kuper.

## Usage

### Starting &kscore;

To start &kscore;, click with the right mouse button on an empty spot on the &kde; panel and select Add Applet Sports Ticker. Alternatively, from the K menu, select Panel Menu Add Applet Sports Ticker

### Controlling &kscore;

#### Menu Commands

When &kscore; is started, an applet should appear in the panel. (If the panel is full, you may need to scroll to see it.) To move or remove it, right click on the bar to the left or top of the applet and select Move or Remove.

Left click on the applet to update the displayed score. Right click to bring up a menu with the following options:

Settings

  Opens the settings dialog box.

Online

  Toggles score downloads on and off. Turn off when you do not have an active network connection.

Help

  Displays these help pages.

About

  Displays information about &kscore;

#### Settings

The &kscore; settings dialog box
The &kscore; settings dialog box

The settings dialog box allows you to set the following options:

League

  Choose the desired league from the drop-down list.

Team

  Enter the three letter code for the team you want to follow. Press the Browse teams button to connect to Excite and see the available codes for the selected league.

Text color

  Select the color of the displayed text. This is useful when the panel has a background image.

Update every x minutes

  Set the interval between score updates. (The minimum interval is 10 minutes; the maximum 300 minutes.)

### Closing &kscore;

Removing &kscore; from the panel
Removing &kscore; from the panel

I'm happy to say that I've received a lot of mail from &kscore; users. I'm less happy to report that most of them are asking how to remove it from the panel! As with all &kde; panel applets, click with the right mouse button on the left border of the applet (top border in a vertical panel) and select Remove.

## Questions and Answers

### Error Messages

There are two error messages you may see. Here's what to do about them.

No Score Available

  The most likely causes are:

  An incorrect team code

    Press the Browse teams button in the settings dialog box to see the available team codes for the selected league.

  No score available for the selected team

    Unfortunately, this usually means your team has been eliminated from the playoffs. Again, try the Browse teams button in the settings dialog box to see the available team codes for the selected league.

  The scores are downloaded from http://sports.excite.com. If they change something in their format, &kscore; will break. Please let me know at jsinger@leeta.net if there's a problem.

Download Failed

  The most likely causes are:

  No active network connection.

    If you have a dial-up connection, you probably want to take &kscore; offline when your connection is inactive. (Uncheck Online in the pop-up menu.)

  If Excite changes their &URL;s, &kscore; will be unable to download the correct page. Again, please let me know at jsinger@leeta.net if there's a problem.

### Other Questions

Can you add another league, or scores from a different site?

I'd love to add more non-North American coverage. Let me know at jsinger@leeta.net what sites you're interested in and I'll try to add them. (I'd also be eager to hear from anyone with Perl skills who can help me create scripts to parse new sites.)

How do I get &kscore; to work in a vertical panel with size set to Tiny?

Unfortunately, even a normal panel doesn't have as much space as &kscore; could really use. A Normal size vertical panel is the smallest I could get to look decent.

## Credits and Licenses

&kscore;

&underFDL;

The Perl script that processes scores is copyright Todd Kuper, under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Other files copyright (c) 2000, Jonathan Singer and made available under the below BSD-style license. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

* Neither the name of the author nor the names of other contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

## Installation

### How to obtain &kscore;

&kscore; is part of the kdetoys package and should be compiled and installed as indicated in the package's main directory. New versions of kdetoys can be obtained at ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/.

### Requirements

&kscore; was written with &Qt; 2.2.x and &kde; 2 on a PowerCenter 150 running &LinuxPPC; 1999. It should work on anything &kde; runs on. Should you run into problems please report them to the author jsinger@leeta.net.

### Compilation and Installation

In order to compile and install &kscore; on your system, type the following in the base directory of the kdetoys distribution:

    % ./configure
    % make
    % make install

Since &kscore; uses `autoconf` and `automake` you should not have trouble compiling it. Should you run into problems please report them to the &kde; mailing lists.