DOSAGE(1)                                                    DOSAGE(1)



NAME
       dosage - a comic strip downloader and archiver

SYNOPSIS
       dosage [options] module...

DESCRIPTION
       dosage  is  an  application  designed to keep a local mirror of
       specific web comics and other picture-based  content,  such  as
       Picture  Of The Day sites, with a variety of options for updat‐
       ing and maintaining collections.

OPTIONS
       -b PATH, --basepath=PATH
              Specifies a base path to put comic  subdirectories.  The
              default is Comics.

       --baseurl=PATH
              Specifies  the base URL for output handlers. The default
              is a local file URI.

       -a, --all
              Traverses all available strips backwards from  the  cur‐
              rent one.  This can be useful you want a full collection
              of a new comic strip, or update an  existing  one  where
              files  are  missing.   Catchups  can start at a specific
              strip by using the index syntax, see  the  INDEX  SYNTAX
              and  SPECIAL  SYNTAX sections for more information. This
              is useful when you missed some days  and  want  only  to
              download the missing files.

       -c, --continue
              Same  as  --all,  but  stop  at the first existing image
              file.  Useful for cron jobs that are not executed  every
              day.

       -h, --help
              Output brief help information.

       -l, --list
              List available comic modules in multi-column fashion.

       --singlelist
              List available comic modules in single-column fashion.

       -m MODULE, --modulehelp=MODULE
              Output module-specific help for MODULE.

       -o OUTPUT, --output=OUTPUT
              OUTPUT may be any one of the following:

              html  -  Writes  out  an HTML file linking to the strips
              actually downloaded in the current run,  named  by  date
              (ala  dailystrips).  The  files can be found in the html
              directory of your Comics directory.

              rss - Writes out an RSS feed detailing what strips  were
              downloaded  in  the last 24 hours. The feed can be found
              in Comics/dailydose.xml.

              json - Write a JSON file with all download infos  (URLs,
              images).  Can be used with other scripts, eg. order-sym‐
              links.py to add symbolic links.
       This option can be given multiple times.

       -t, --timestamps
              Print timestamps for all output at any level.

       -v, --verbose
              Increase the output level by one with each occurence.

       -V, --version
              Display the version number.  module At least  one  valid
              module must be specified. A list of valid modules can be
              found by passing the -l option.  Multiple  module  argu‐
              ments  can  be  specified  on  the command line.  Module
              names are case insensitive,  and  it  is  sufficient  to
              specify a unique substring of the module name.

INDEX SYNTAX
       Instead  of  starting  at the latest comic strip, an index lets
       dosage start at a certain strip. The index can be specified  by
       appending a colon : and the index name after the module. Multi‐
       ple comma-spearated indices can also be specified.

       The index name itself usually is the part of  the  comic  strip
       URL  that  identifiess  a  strip,  eg.  a number or a date. The
       expected format  is  documented  when  using  the  --modulehelp
       option.

SPECIAL SYNTAX
       @      This  expands  to  mean all the comics currently in your
              Comics directory. All other specified comic module names
              will be ignored.

       @@     This expands to mean all the comics available to Dosage.

       INDEX SYNTAX can not be used with SPECIAL SYNTAX.

EXAMPLES
       Retrieve all Mega Tokyo comics:
              dosage -a megatokyo

       Retrieve the current comic of Cyanide and Happiness:
              dosage cyanideandhappiness

       Retrieve  the current strip of all comics in your Comics direc‐
       tory:
              dosage @

       Retrieve the current strip of every comic that there is a  mod‐
       ule for:
              dosage @@

       Retrieve the Penny Arcade strip for a given index:
              dosage pennyarcade:2004-07-22

       Retrieve  Calvin  and  Hobbes  strips  from a given index going
       backwards to the beginning.
              dosage -a calvinandhobbes:2012/07/22

       On Unix, xargs(1) can download several comic strips  in  paral‐
       lel, for example using up to 4 processes:
              cd  Comics && find . -type d | xargs -n1 -P4 dosage -b .
              -v

ENVIRONMENT
       HTTP_PROXY
              dosage will use the specified HTTP proxy when  download‐
              ing URL contents.

NOTES
       Should retrieval fail on any given strip dosage will attempt to
       retry. However the retry information is only outputted  in  the
       second and successive output levels.

       At  the time of writing, a complete Dosage collection weighs in
       at around 3.0GB.

RETURN VALUE
       The return value greater than zero when

       ·      a program error occurred.

       ·      comics could not be found or downloaded

       ·      the program run was aborted with Ctrl-C

       Else the return value is zero.

BUGS
       Users can report or view bugs, patches or  feature  suggestions
       at https://github.com/wummel/dosage/issues

AUTHORS
       Jonathan  Jacobs,  Tristan  Seligmann, Bastian Kleineidam <bas‐
       tian.kleineidam@web.de>

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright © 2004-2005 Tristan Seligmann and Jonathan Jacobs
       Copyright © 2012-2013 Bastian Kleineidam



                                                             DOSAGE(1)