# FreeGuide README

NOTE: Before you use FreeGuide you need to set up your timezone.

## Contents

- Introduction
- Installing FreeGuide
- Using FreeGuide
- Developers
- Credits
- Licence

## Introduction

FreeGuide is a TV guide program. It uses parser programs to extract TV information from web pages and stores them for viewing without the need to connect to the Internet. The viewer allows the user to view television listings and create customised TV guides by selecting programmes and by building up a favourites list.

It works with listings for Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan (Linux only), the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US.

## Installing FreeGuide

If you are in North America, you need to get a Data Direct account from Zap2it before you install FreeGuide. To do this, go to http://labs.zap2it.com and click the "New User? Sign-Up" link. Use the certificate code `TUYO-DCXM-CBUT`. Make a note of the username and password you choose as you will need to enter them during the first-time wizard. NOTE: You should enter your password despite the warning.

## Windows

NOTE: if you are upgrading from version 0.7.5 or below to 0.8 or above, you will probably want to delete the directory "C:\Program Files\freeguide-tv" after you've installed the new version, since FreeGuide's default installation directory has moved from there to "C:\Program Files\FreeGuide".

- Make sure you've got Java version 1.4 or above. (How do I know?)
- Set your timezone. (How?)
- Download the file FreeGuide-X.X-Windows.exe from the download page and double-click on it to run it. When you click "Install" it will put shortcuts in your Start Menu, your shortcut bar and on your desktop. Click on one of those shortcuts to start FreeGuide.

If you have problems try looking for an answer in the FAQ.

## Linux

Follow the instructions on how to install and configure XMLTV and then FreeGuide.

## Other

Users of other operating systems should try following the build your own XMLTV installation instructions. Please let us know how you get on and if possible contribute some instructions for your platform.

## Using FreeGuide

Check out the User Guide for general instructions, the FAQ if you have problems, or the Look and Feel FAQ if you have questions about customizing FreeGuide's appearance.

## Developers

If you're interested in helping with FreeGuide development, check out the developers' page and the design document. Future plans are shown in the TODO (Or see the very latest TODO in CVS). You can also check out the Sourceforge page.

## Credits

FreeGuide is written by the FreeGuide contributors (copyright 2001-2004).

FreeGuide's home page is at http://freeguide-tv.sourceforge.net. You can contact the lead developer, Andy Balaam at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR), University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, UK.

FreeGuide uses the XMLTV grabbers (and file format) developed by the very friendly people at XMLTV (http://membled.com/work/apps/xmltv/. It also contains snippets of other code borrowed from other GPL projects: see the contributors page for info.

## Licence

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 (at your option) any later version. This licence is contained in the file COPYING

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 US