PublishDate: 2025-07-07 09:00:00 Importance: Normal Title: Welcome to the Rosetta Package Manager Category: General +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Welcome to the Rosetta Package Manager! | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ This is a sample news item to introduce you to the Rosetta package manager. These news items can be used to provide information and updates to those who use your repository. 1 News File Location ==================== News items come from four different sources: - Repository-wide news items, located in /news - Channel-related news items, located in /channel//news - Component-related news items, located in /channel//component//news - Package-related news items, included in individual package files. Specific news items can be published in different locations depending on who the news is relevant for. For example, if there is some critical issue that affects all users of a repository, /news would be the perfect place to use. If, instead, the issue only affects users of a particular channel (maybe you have a channel for each release of your operating system), /channel//news would be more appropriate. It's important that news is targeted to the appropriate audience so that users don't have to sift through news that isn't relevant to them. 2 News File Format ================== The news file has a specific plain-text format, which can be seen in this file. 2.1 General Layout ------------------ The news file contains one or more news items. Each news item begins with a header section describing the news item, followed by a content section containing the actual news content. At the end of the last news item is an optional footer section. 2.1 Header ---------- Each news item begins with a standardised header section describing it. A range of header items are supported. These include: - PublishDate: The date and time on which the news item was published. This is used by clients to determine which news items have been released since the user last checked the news. This is always in UTC, and is formatted as: YYYY-MM-DD HH:NN:SS where: * YYYY is the current year. * MM is the current month number, with a leading 0 if less than 10. * DD is the current day of the month, with a leading 0 if less than 10. * HH is the current hour of the day, between 0-24, with a leading 0 if less than 10. * NN is the current minute of the hour, between 0-59, with a leading 0 if less than 10. * SS is the current second of the minute, between 0-59, with a leading 0 if less than 10. - Title: The title of the news item. - Category: The particular category that the news item is relevant to. Possible values include: * General * Security - Importance: How important it is that the user reads this news. Possible values include: * Low * Normal * High * Critical The user has to go out of their way to read Low and Normal news items, while High and Critical news items will be shown automatically when the user next interacts with the relevant part of the repo. Immediately following these headers are two line-feed characters. This denotes the end of the header and the start of the content of the news files. With two line feeds, there should be exactly one blank line visible between the last header line and the first content line. At the end of the file is a line with 5 asterisk (*) characters. This denotes the end of the of the news file's content and the start of the footer. Beyond this point, you can put extra data, such as the vim formatting commands visible in this file, that you don't want shown to the user. If no footer is required, the 5-asterisk marker can be omitted, and the news content will simply end where the file ends. 2.2 Content ----------- Following the header is the actual news content that is shown to the user. This section can be formatted in any way you prefer; any plaintext is acceptable. This news file has been formated in a particular way to provide example formatting that you may wish to use. It features a page header, section and sub-section headings, and list formatting. All paragraphs are indented with three spaces. The gap between a list item marker and list item text is two spaces, with any following lines in that particular list item indented with three spaces. There is one blank line between each paragraph, and two blank lines between the last line in one section and the heading of the next. The only formatting rule that should be adhered to is that, like code, lines should be kept to no longer than 80 characters. This is due to the fact that the vast majority of users will be viewing news items within their terminal as they are using the ropkg commands, and 80 cells is the standard width for terminal displays. The end of the news content is marked by two line feed characters, followed by five asterisk characters. If this is the last news item in the file, no end marker is required; the end of the file implicitly marks the end of the final news item. 2.3 Footer ---------- The footer is an optional part of the news file, located at the very end. It can be used for data that shouldn't be shown to the user. For example, if you use vim to write your news files, you can include vim in-line formatting directives in the footer to make writing the news file easier, without them being visible to the user. Of course, it is up to the program displaying the news item to respect these visibility rules, so while the data in the footer is (ideall) not visible, it is still always public. To add a footer to your news file, use a footer marker at the end of the last news item in the file. The footer marker is the same as the content end marker (two linefeeds, followed by five asterisks), but with an additional exclamation mark immediately following the fifth asterisk. *****! vim: shiftwidth=3 expandtab