Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

This might not be helpful to you, but my technique is this:

I have a file in my home directory called LJQUOTES and a subdirectory called quotetmp. The LJQUOTES file looks like this:

<!-- cut line for QotD automation script -- Tue 20031104 -->



<p><i>"Ignore your rights and they'll go away"</i> --

bumper sticker</i></p>



<!-- cut line for QotD automation script -- Wed 20031105 -->



<p><lj user="jducoeur">

<a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/jducoeur/39456.html">

wrote</a>, <i>"The only reasonable conclusion is that

the universe is whimsical when bored..."</i></p>



<!-- cut line for QotD automation script -- Thu 20031106 -->



<p><i>"The answer may not end up in a major scientific journal or

dramatically change [...]



[. . .]



<!-- cut line for QotD automation script -- Sun 20040104 -->



<p>+++ If you see this, it means I screwed up and let my automatic

quote-of-the-day script run out of quotes to post.</p>



<!-- cut line for QotD automation script -- Mon 20040105 -->



<p>+++ If you see this, it means I screwed up and let my automatic

quote-of-the-day script run out of quotes to post.</p>

Then I've got a script called qotd:

# Move to directory just for dealing with quotes.

cd ~/quotetmp

# Break LJQUOTEFILE into individual entries for ease of manipulation.

csplit ../LJQUOTEFILE -n 4 '/cut line for QotD automation script/' "{*}"

# Strip off delimiter from the quote I'm going to post, then call the 
# 'clive' LJ client to post it and mail myself a copy.

sed -e "/cut line for QotD automation script/d" xx0001 > today.tmp
/shared/Software/Linux-386/clive -p -u dglenn -w LunaGrad -s QotD < today.tmp
mail -s "Automagically posted LJ QotD" `whoami` < today.tmp

# Clean up:  Delete the un-stripped copy of the entry 
# just posted, as well as the empty file 'csplit' will have 
# left as xx0000...

rm xx0001 xx0000

# Glue all the other entries back together as a new copy of 
# LJQUOTEFILE and delete the xx* files...

cat xx* > ../LJQUOTEFILE
rm xx*

# And give an archival filename to the edited entry just posted.

mv today.tmp qotd.`date +%Y%m%d`.html

And finally, in /var/spool/cron/dglenn, is the following line:

25 5 * * * /home/dglenn/bin/qotd | /usr/bin/tail -5

If you're running Windows or MacOS 9.x or earlier (no clue here about BeOS) you'll have to do things a little differently or a lot differently, depending on what extra goodies you have or haven't installed. The same basic approach should work as long as there's a scheduling tool to take the place of 'cron' and something that'll chop the quotes file up and massage it apropriately. I haven't tried this under MacOS X yet, but I don't see why it wouldn't work as long as you can get 'clive' to compile (which shouldn't be hard).

There's probably a less-roundabout way do do it using Perl or Python, but it was quicker for me to hack it together using tools I didn't have to think about. I should really add error-checking so it'll automatically notice (and react to) problems such as my net connection being down or LJ being twitchy, but currently I just check it when I wake up and manually post any entry that didn't work automagically.

Dunno whether this helps or not ... I guess it depends on what tools you've got handy. I don't think I know what operating systems you use.