How to output cutenews as html files

there was a request for this a little while ago, so i figured i would take a stab at it.

step 1: htaccess file
first, we have to define the rewrite rule in the htaccess file

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule yoursite(.*)-(.*)-(.*)-(.*)-(.*)\.htm$ /path/to/cutenews/example1.php?subaction=$1&id=$2&archive=$3&start_from=$4&ucat=$5&template=$6

what you need to change is the path to your cutenews install and the name of the rewrite rule. i suggest something like the name of your site. for the rest of the example i'm going to use yoursite, but anytime you see that replace it with whatever you put in the htaccess file.
now, make sure you put the .htaccess file in the root of your server, not in the cutenews install folder.

step 2: what the output looks like
a url like this:

http://www.yoururl.com/cutenews/example1.php?subaction=showcomments&id=1113154832&archive=1&start_from=&ucat=&template=

would look like this:

http://www.yoururl.com/yoursiteshowcomments-1113154832-1---.htm

so, it is of the form

http://www.yoururl.com/yoursitesubaction-id-archive-start_from-cat-template.html

step 3: incorporating it into cutenews
for this you have two options. you can either change the links in your templates, or actually edit the code of shows.inc.php.
either works, and i'm actually a fan of changing shows.inc.php, but that isn't for everyone, and makes it more of a hack then just an option.

to manually change the links, here is how you would show comments

[url=http://www.yoururl.com/yoursiteshowcomments-{news-id}-{archive-id}----.htm] comments[/url]

now, you would just have to change the subaction for however you want to link it, but it shouldn't be too hard.
to hack the shows.inc.php, i'll show you how to change one of them, and hopefully you can figure the rest out.

in shows.inc.php, there is

$output = str_replace("[link]","[url=]", $output);
        $output = str_replace("[/link]","[/url]", $output);

which would become

$output = str_replace("[link]","[url=]", $output);
        $output = str_replace("[/link]","[/url]", $output);

it actually is actually fairly easy to pull off. now, this only works if your server allows mod_rewrite, but most do. if you have any questions, i'll try to answer them, but i honestly only first looked at this like an hour ago so i'm no expert. enjoy.