+Overview
+--------
+
This tool can:
- screenscrape the commodities trading screen
- produce the results as a tab separated values file
- - **TODO** upload the results to PCTB
+ - upload the results to PCTB
To run it, change to this directory, type `make', and then:
./ypp-commodities --tsv >commods.tsv
-It may put up a window asking about characters it does not understand.
-It is important to get these inputs right or it may misrecognise
-things in future. **TODO** write actual useful instructuions to cover the
-subtleties. The results are stored in the file `charset-15.txt'.
-
-If you need to report a bug, please be sure to remember the exact
-error message and circumstances. Also, for recognition problems there
-will probably be a very useful screenshot file called `#pages#.pnm'.
-This is likely to be very large so don't just email it to me, but if
-you can put it up on a webpage for me to download that will help.
-
-Options available:
-
- Setting the operation mode:
- --find-window-only Just check that we can find the YPP client window.
- --screenshot-only Page through and take screenshots, do not OCR
- --analyse-only | --same Process previously taken screenshots
- --everything (default) Take screenshots and process them
-
- Options to vary the processing:
- --single-page One screenful, no paging - results will be incomplete
- --quiet Suppress progress messages
- --screenshot-file F Store or read screenshots in F rather than #pages#.pnm
- --window-id ID Specified X window is the YPP client - do not search
-
- Setting the output processing:
- --raw-tsv Dump the raw not deduped unsorted OCR'd data
- --upload (default) Upload to the PCTB server
- --tsv Print data as clean tab-separated-values file
- --best-prices Print best buy and sell price for each commodity
- --arbitrage Print arbitrage opportunityes
+While it is capturing the screenshots, do not move the mouse or use
+the keyboard. Keyboard focus must stay in the YPP client window.
+
+You will probably need to turn off `Use antialiased font' in the YPP
+client. This is in the Ye panel, Options, tab `General'.
+
+Command-line options
+--------------------
+
+Setting the operation mode:
+ --find-window-only Just check that we can find the YPP client window.
+ --screenshot-only Page through and take screenshots, do not OCR
+ --analyse-only | --same Process previously taken screenshots
+ --everything (default) Take screenshots and process them
+
+Options to vary the processing:
+ --single-page One screenful, no paging - results will be incomplete
+ --quiet Suppress progress messages
+ --screenshot-file F Store or read screenshots in F rather than #pages#.pnm
+ --window-id ID Specified X window is the YPP client - do not search
+ --edit-charset Enable character set editing. See README.dictionary.
+ --find-island Find and print the ocean and island. Suppresses OCR
+ and output unless used with result processing option.
+ --test-servers Set default servers to be the test servers, not
+ the real live ones (doesn't affect explicit settings).
+
+Controlling what happens to the results - only one at a time:
+ --upload (default) Upload to the PCTB server
+ --tsv Print data as clean tab-separated-values file
+ --raw-tsv Dump the raw (not deduped, unsorted) OCR'd data
+ --best-prices Print best buy and sell price for each commodity
+ --arbitrage Print arbitrage opportunities
+
+Privacy options, which control conversations with the dictionary server:
+ --dict-local-only * Do not talk to the server even to fetch new dictionary.
+ --dict-read-only * Only fetch new dictionary, do not submit new entries.
+ --dict-anon Don't quote pirate name if submitting entries.
+ --dict-submit Submit entries quoting my pirate name. (default)
+Please do not use options marked * with --upload. See README.privacy.
+
+Options to override which servers we talk to:
+ --pctb-server HOST|URL Talk to the PCTB server at HOST or URL.
+ --dict-submit-url URL Submit dictionary entries with HTTP POST under URL.
+ --dict-update-from SRC Fetch updated master dictionary with rsync from SRC.
+Or set the environment variables YPPSC_PCTB{_PCTB, _DICT_UPDATE, _DICT_SUBMIT}
+
+
+Files we use and update
+-----------------------
+
+The program reads and writes the following files:
+
+ * #pages#.pnm
+
+ Contains one or more images (as raw ppms, end-to-end) which are the
+ screenshots taken in the last run. This is (over)written whenever
+ we take screenshots from the YPP client. You can reprocess an
+ existing set of screenshots with the --same (aka --analyse-only)
+ option; in that case we just read the screenshots file.
+
+ You can specify a different file with --screenshot-file.
+
+ If you want to display the contents of this file, `display' can do
+ it. Don't try `display vid:#pages#.pnm' as this will consume
+ truly stupendous quantities of RAM - it wedged my laptop.
+
+ * #master-newcommods#.txt #local-newcommods#.txt
+
+ Dictionary of newly introduced commodities. When a new commodity
+ appears in Puzzle Pirates, the PCTB server operators need to add it
+ to their database for us to be able to upload data about it.
+
+ It can sometimes take a few days to do this. In the meantime, it
+ is possible to upload partial data - data just omitting that
+ commodity. This is controlled by these files: they list
+ commodities which should be automatically ignored if the PCTB
+ server doesn't know about them. The master file is downloaded and
+ updated automatically from my server. You may create the local
+ file yourself. The format is simple: one commodity per line.
+
+ Unrecognised commodities can also be due to OCR failure so
+ double-check what you're doing before overriding the uploader by
+ telling it to ignore an unrecognised commodity.
+
+ * #master-char*#.txt #local-char*#.txt
+ #master-pixmap#.txt #local-pixmap#.txt
+
+ Character set and image dictionaries. For the semantics of the
+ char* files README.charset. There is not currently any accurate
+ documentation of this dictionary format.
+
+ #master-*#.txt contain the centrally defined and approved data.
+ They are downloaded automatically from the SC PCTB server and
+ updated each run. You can safely delete this file, if everything
+ is online, if you want to fetch a fresh copy.
+
+ #local-*#.txt are a local copy of your submissions, so that they
+ will be used by your client pending approval by me. You can delete
+ this file if you think you may have made a mistake.
+
+ See README.privacy for details of the communications with the SC
+ server about the contents of these dictionaries.
+
+ * #commodmap#.tsv
+
+ Map from commodity names to the numbers required by the PCTB
+ server. This is fetched and updated automatically as necessary.
+ It can safely be deleted as it will then be refetched.
+
+ * #upload-1#.html #upload-2#.html
+
+ We screenscrape the pages from the PCTB upload server. The actual
+ HTML returned from the upload server is left in these dropping
+ files for debugging etc.
+
+ * <file>.new
+
+ When any of these tools overwrite one of the persistent dictionary
+ files, they temporarily write to <file>.new.
+
+These files are all in the current working directory. There is not
+yet any feature to have them be somewhere else. The helper programs
+ dictionary-manager
+ commod-results-processor
+must (currently) also be in the current directory.
+
+Future versions may have more helpers and more data files.
+
+
+Installation requirements
+-------------------------
+
+This program has quite a few dependencies:
+ Package (Debian etch)
+
+ - For building, C compiler and build environment build-essential
+ - pnm library, including dev files for building libnetpbm10-dev
+ - pnm command line utilities for image manipulation netpbm
+ - X11 libraries, including dev files for building libx11-dev
+ - XTEST library, including dev files for building libxtst-dev
+ - Perl-compatible regexp library, including dev files libpcre3-dev
+ - Tk interpreter /usr/bin/wish tk8.4
+ - Perl module XML::Parser libxml-parser-perl
+ - Perl module JSON::Parser libjson-perl
+ - XTEST extension in the X server (part of X package)
+ - Perl interpreter and basic modules perl (usu.installed)
+
+On other Linux distros the packages may have different names, but
+these should be roughly right for Debian and its derivatives.
+
+
+Reporting problems
+------------------
+
+If you need to report a bug, for example an inability to recognise,
+please be sure to remember the exact error message and circumstances.
+Also, for recognition problems there will probably be a very useful
+screenshot file called `#pages#.pnm'. This is likely to be very large
+so don't just email it to me, but if you can put it up on a webpage
+for me to download that will help. At least keep a copy of it.
+
+If the problem is a failure to cope with some particular YPP client
+display and is reproducible, try running:
+ ./ypp-commodities --raw-tsv --single-page
+If this reproduces the problem, please email me the screenshot file
+#pages#.pnm, which will consist only of the single screen, plus the
+error messasge. I'll then be able to understand what's wrong,
+hopefully.
+
+
+Privacy
+-------
+
+The main purpose of this program is to connect to the PCTB server and
+upload data. It will do that if you run it with --upload.
+
+This program will also, by default, talk to the dictionary server I
+have set up: to download updated image dictionaries, and to upload new
+dictionary entries which you create with the PCTB client dictionary
+GUI. This feature is mentioned in and controllable in the GUI itself,
+so it won't happen without you knowing about it.
+
+The uploads will by default mention your ocean and pirate name; if you
+don't want that, pass the --dict-anon option, or untick the box in the
+GUI.
+
+See README.privacy for full details.
+
+
+ - Ian Jackson
+ ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk
+ Aristarchus on the Midnight ocean
~yarrgweb / ypp-sc-tools.db-live.git / blobdiff