base/applications/rapps/README.ENG

   1 For more information about RAPPS, take a look at <https://reactos.org/wiki/RAPPS>
   2
   3 ADDING DOWNLOADABLE PROGRAMS TO THE RAPPS DATABASE
   4 --------------------------------------------------
   5
   6 Each program entry consists of a text file formatted with an INI-like syntax.
   7
   8 They must be encoded in UTF-16 LE (Little Endian) or characters out of the ANSI range
   9 will display broken mojibake, some editors like Notepad++ call this format UCS-2 Little Endian.
  10
  11 If you plan on including your program entry in the ReactOS source code versioning keep in mind
  12 that entries are stored in UTF-8 without BOM (Byte Order Mask) for VCS friendliness.
  13
  14 They get automatically converted to UTF-16 when creating the compressed rappmgr.cab package,
  15 which is how clients obtain their program lists every time a Database upgrade is triggered.
  16
  17 Also, each [Section] is language-independent and individual, you can override the URL to a source
  18 program or any other field by adding a language-specific [Section.], followed by the language code.
  19
  20 NOTE: You can find a complete listing of LCIDs and language names here, includes neutral codes:
  21      <https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd318693%28v=vs.85%29.aspx>
  22
  23 Now RAPPS also accepts neutral language codes, meaning that you can do things like this:
  24
  25   ; Default English fallback, used if everything else fails.
  26   [Section]
  27   Name = Name in English
  28
  29   ; Neutral Spanish, used if the specific variant of Spanish does not match.
  30   [Section.0a]
  31   Name = Name in Generic Spanish
  32
  33   ; Spanish from Spain, used if the system is configured for it.
  34   [Section.0c0a]
  35   Name = Name in Castilian Spanish
  36
  37
  38 You can also define an entry without English fallback to make it visible to certain users only.
  39 For instance; software from 1C, which is mostly for Russian speakers and unusable for anyone else.
  40
  41 File format overview:
  42
  43   ; This is a INI-style comment, useful for adding additional information.
  44   ; Lines starting with a ; character are skipped by the parser.
  45
  46   [Section]
  47   Name = My fun stuff-o-matic
  48   RegName = Name in Registry
  49   Version = 1.1.1
  50   License = GPL
  51   Description = Shortish description giving some additional background information about what it does.
  52   Size = 10 MB
  53   Category = 5
  54   URLSite = https://example.org/
  55   URLDownload = https://ftp.example.org/pub/installer.exe
  56   CDPath = ; Path in the local filesystem
  57
  58   [Section.0419] ; 0419 - for Russian language
  59   Description = Description in Russian language
  60   ...
  61
  62
  63 The mandatory fields are: Name, Category and URLDownload
  64 All other fields are completely optional and can be skipped.
  65
  66 List of valid categories:
  67  1 - Audio
  68  2 - Video
  69  3 - Graphics
  70  4 - Games
  71  5 - Internet
  72  6 - Office
  73  7 - Development
  74  8 - Edutainment
  75  9 - Engineering
  76 10 - Finance
  77 11 - Science
  78 12 - Tools
  79 13 - Drivers
  80 14 - Libraries
  81 15 - Other
  82
  83 The official list of downloadable programs is kept on a public ReactOS server
  84 and synced every time RAPPS is launched for the first time.
  85
  86 NOTE: You can find the most current URL in rapps.h, defined as APPLICATION_DATABASE_URL.
  87
  88 To generate a RAPPS database (usually a rappmgr.cab archive), use the included scripts:
  89
  90 For Windows & other NT-derived: CreateCabFile.bat
  91 For Linux & other UNIX flavors: CreateCabFile.sh
  92
  93
  94 Once the rappmgr.cab is downloaded to %appdata%\rapps, RAPPS extracts it using cabinet.dll
  95 inside %appdata%\rapps\rapps, after that, it will parse all the *.txt files contained therein.
  96
  97 Every subsequent time the program tries to access the local .txt files
  98 until a database update is manually triggered by the user.
  99
 100 If the rappmgr.cab file is moved or just missing, RAPPS will download it again.