5 - screenscrape the commodities trading screen
6 - produce the results as a tab separated values file
7 - upload the results to PCTB
9 To run it, change to this directory, type `make', and then:
10 ./ypp-commodities --upload
11 to upload to the PCTB server. Currently we use pctb.ilk.org,
12 the testing instance of the PCTB database, pending approval from the
13 operators of the main server.
15 Or, for example, for a tab-separated values dump:
16 ./ypp-commodities --tsv >commods.tsv
18 While it is capturing the screenshots, do not move the mouse or use
19 the keyboard. Keyboard focus must stay in the YPP client window.
25 Setting the operation mode:
26 --find-window-only Just check that we can find the YPP client window.
27 --screenshot-only Page through and take screenshots, do not OCR
28 --analyse-only | --same Process previously taken screenshots
29 --everything (default) Take screenshots and process them
31 Options to vary the processing:
32 --single-page One screenful, no paging - results will be incomplete
33 --quiet Suppress progress messages
34 --screenshot-file F Store or read screenshots in F rather than #pages#.pnm
35 --window-id ID Specified X window is the YPP client - do not search
36 --edit-charset Enable character set editing. See README.dictionary.
37 --no-edit-charset Do not edit charset even if #local-char*#.txt exists.
38 --find-island Find and print the ocean and island. Suppresses OCR
39 and output unless used with result processing option.
40 --test-servers Set default servers to be the test servers, not
41 the real live ones (doesn't affect explicit settings).
43 Controlling what happens to the results - only one at a time:
44 --upload (default) Upload to the PCTB server
45 --tsv Print data as clean tab-separated-values file
46 --raw-tsv Dump the raw (not deduped, unsorted) OCR'd data
47 --best-prices Print best buy and sell price for each commodity
48 --arbitrage Print arbitrage opportunities
50 Privacy options, which control conversations with the dictionary server:
51 --dict-local-only * Do not talk to the server even to fetch new dictionary.
52 --dict-read-only * Only fetch new dictionary, do not submit new entries.
53 --dict-anon Don't quote pirate name if submitting entries.
54 --dict-submit Submit entries quoting my pirate name. (default)
55 Please do not use options marked * with --upload. See README.privacy.
57 Options to override which servers we talk to:
58 --pctb-server HOST|URL Talk to the PCTB server at HOST or URL.
59 --dict-submit-url URL Submit dictionary entries with HTTP POST under URL.
60 --dict-update-from SRC Fetch updated master dictionary with rsync from SRC.
61 Or set the environment variables YPPSC_PCTB{_PCTB, _DICT_UPDATE, _DICT_SUBMIT}
64 Installation requirements
65 -------------------------
67 This program has quite a few dependencies:
70 - For building, C compiler and build environment build-essential
71 - pnm library, including dev files for building libnetpbm10-dev
72 - pnm command line utilities for image manipulation netpbm
73 - X11 libraries, including dev files for building libx11-dev
74 - XTEST library, including dev files for building libxtst-dev
75 - Perl-compatible regexp library, including dev files libpcre3-dev
76 - Tk interpreter /usr/bin/wish tk8.4
77 - Perl module XML::Parser libxml-parser-perl
78 - Perl module JSON::Parser libjson-perl
79 - XTEST extension in the X server (part of X package)
80 - Perl interpreter and basic modules perl (usu.installed)
82 On other Linux distros the packages may have different names, but
83 these should be roughly right for Debian and its derivatives. You can
84 install them with this rune:
85 sudo apt-get install build-essential libnetpbm10-dev netpbm libx11-dev libxtst-dev libpcre3-dev tk8.4 libxml-parser-perl libjson-perl
88 The supplied helper programs
90 commod-results-processor
92 must (currently) also be in the current working directory when you run
93 the main ypp-commodities program.
95 The data files (see README.files) are also left in the current working
96 directory. There is notyet any feature to have the data files and
97 helpers be somewhere else.
103 If you need to report a bug, for example an inability to recognise,
104 please be sure to remember the exact error message and circumstances.
105 Also, for recognition problems there will probably be a very useful
106 screenshot file called `#pages#.pnm'. This is likely to be very large
107 so don't just email it to me, but if you can put it up on a webpage
108 for me to download that will help. At least keep a copy of it.
110 If the problem is a failure to cope with some particular YPP client
111 display and is reproducible, try running:
112 ./ypp-commodities --raw-tsv --single-page
113 If this reproduces the problem, please email me the screenshot file
114 #pages#.pnm, which will consist only of the single screen, plus the
115 error messasge. I'll then be able to understand what's wrong,
122 The main purpose of this program is to connect to the PCTB server and
123 upload data. It will do that if you run it with --upload.
125 This program will also, by default, talk to the dictionary server I
126 have set up: to download updated image dictionaries, and to upload new
127 dictionary entries which you create with the PCTB client dictionary
128 GUI. This feature is mentioned in and controllable in the GUI itself,
129 so it won't happen without you knowing about it.
131 The uploads will by default mention your ocean and pirate name; if you
132 don't want that, pass the --dict-anon option, or untick the box in the
135 See README.privacy for full details.
140 ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk
141 Aristarchus on the Midnight ocean