.TH µB 1
.SH NAME
read, write \- simple microblogging
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B µb/read
[
.B -pr
]
[
.B -h
.I url
]
[
.I user
]
.br
.B µb/write
[
.B -d
]
[
.B -h
.I url
]
[
.I text ...
]
.SH DESCRIPTION
These
.IR rc (1)
scripts are simple clients for reading and posting on microblogs,
that is, short message publication services that implement the so-called
.I Twitter
.SM API\.
.PP
.I Read
prints on the standard output a microblog user
.IR user 's
``Personal Timeline'' at the
.SM API
root
.SM URL
.IR url .
In the absence of
.BR -h ,
the value of the environment variable
.BR µblog ,
if any, is used.
If no
.I user
is given,
the environment variable
.B µsr
is consulted.
If
.B $µsr
is in turn empty,
.B $user
is presumed as the remote user name.
.PP
Under
.BR -p ,
.I read
prints the entire ``Public Timeline''.
Option
.B -r
prints only replies sent to the 
.IR user .
.PP
.I Write
publishes
.I text
to the microblog service at the
.SM API
root
.IR url.
If
.B -h
is omitted,
.I write
uses the value of the environment variable
.B µblog
for the service
.SM URL\.
If
.I text
is not given, a single line is read from standard input.
The
.B -d
flag prints the server response (in
.SM JSON
format) on standard error.
.I Write
queries
.IR factotum (4)
for authentication.
.SH SOURCE
.B /rc/bin/µb
.SH SEE ALSO
.IR hget (1),
.I read
in
.IR cat (1)
.PP
http://status.net, ``StatusNet''
.PP
http://apiwiki.twitter.com, ``Twitter API Wiki''
.SH DIAGNOSTICS
.I Write
refuses
.I text
<1 or >140 runes, exiting with status
.BR length .
.SH BUGS
.I Read
cannot read statuses on twitter.com because
.SM URL
differences have not been addressed.
.I Read
scrapes
.SM HTML\.
It should be made to use the
.SM JSON
.SM API\.