The aim of the QuackNews project is to develop a off-line RSS reader/aggregator for use with PDAs, smartphones and other small, limited connection devices.
For portability and easy cross platform porting, QuackNews is written in the Java programming language. QuackNews requires a java runtime environment conforming to the JSR 62: Personal Profile Specification. This specification allows for more extensive applications than those on standard Mobile phones and is compatible with the standard Java, desktop JVM version 1.2 onwards.
QuackNews is available in three binary archives, Zip, GZ and IPK (for the Sharp Zaurus Linux PDA). QuackNews is also available as a source code archive.
QuackNews works by downloading RSS syndication feeds, such as those used by the BBC or other news sites. Once downloaded the RSS feed is used to create a number of HTML web pages on the local device. The structure of the HTML pages can be configured using template files.
QuackNews currently supports four syndication formats; RSS versions 0.91, 0.92 and 2.0 and RDF 1.0.
QuackNews cannot be used to view the HTML pages it creates as it does not have the ability to render HTML. Therefore, any device that you wish to install QuackNews onto will need a web browser, or some other HTML rendering program, that can display HTML pages from the local file system.