+Overview
+--------
+
This tool can:
- screenscrape the commodities trading screen
- produce the results as a tab separated values file
To run it, change to this directory, type `make', and then:
./ypp-commodities --tsv >commods.tsv
+While it is capturing the screenshots, do not move the mouse or use
+the keyboard. Keyboard focus must stay in the YPP client window.
+
+*IMPORTANT*
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
+It is important to get these inputs right or your client may
+misrecognise text in future. You *must* read the documentation in
+README.charset before answering these questions.
+
+
+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
+
+Controlling what happens to the results:
+ --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
+
+
+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.
+
+ * charset-15.txt
+
+ Character set database. For the semantics of the contents of this
+ file see README.charset. There is not currently any accurate
+ documentation of this database format.
+
+ If you delete this file you'll have to re-enter a lot of glyph data
+ (and probably get it wrong and make the program misrecognise
+ things). If you want to undo any mistakes you may have made
+ answering OCR questions you can safely revert this to the version
+ I've supplied.
+
+ * #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.
+
+ * <file>.new
+
+ When any of these tools overwrite one of the persistent database
+ 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
+ yppsc-ocr-resolver
+ yppsc-commod-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
+ - 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.
+
+
+Phoning home - privacy
+----------------------
+
+The main purpose of this program is to connect to the PCTB server and
+upload data. The program does not currently phone home at all in
+modes other than --upload, and when it does it connects to the
+PCTB server not to a system of mine.
+
+However, there are some improvements which I may introduce in the
+future which may change this. I am considering:
+
+ * Having the ocr character resolver talk to a server run by me
+ to look for missing glpyhs, and/or upload those glyphs back
+ to that server so that they can be shared.
+
+ * Having the upload client upload a copy of the data to a server run
+ by me, when run in --upload mode.
+
+If I do do this these new functions may be enabled by default, but it
+will be possible to turn them off, or direct them to different
+servers, with command-line options, and they will be documented here.
+
+ - Ian Jackson
+ ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk
+ Aristarchus on the Midnight ocean
--- /dev/null
+Character set query tool, and semantics of the glyphs
+-----------------------------------------------------
+
+Sometimes the OCR will not be able to recognise some text and you will
+have to help it out. It will display the part it is having trouble
+with, showing where it has got to, and allow you to edit the character
+set database it uses for recognising the text.
+
+*This is subtle* and it is important to understand the way the
+machinery works, and the possible mistakes you can make, before
+answering the program. *Please read this documentation*
+
+If you need help please ask me (ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk, or
+Aristarchus on Midnight in game if I'm on line, or ask any pirate of
+the crew Special Circumstances if they happen to know where I am
+and/or can get in touch).
+
+
+Recognition algorithm
+---------------------
+
+We recognise the text in the commodity screen by doing exact matching
+of `glyph' bitmaps, against the bitmap in each cell in the commodity
+table. We match from left to right.
+
+We do not insist that each glyph is followed by whitespace, and nor do
+we insist that glyphs do not contain whitespace. Our glyph database
+can contain entries which are strict prefixes of other entries - that
+is, a glyph for (say) `v' which is the leftmost part of another glyph
+for (say) `w'. We resolve these ambiguities by taking the longest
+(widest) glyph which matches.
+
+So you should not be surprised if the program has matched the
+left-hand half of some letter and thinks it is a different letter. If
+the part that it did recognise does look like the letter in question,
+that isn't wrong. All you need to do is insert the whole of the
+actual letter in the database - move the LH cursor to the start of the
+letter, and the RH cursor to its end, and hit `return' and enter the
+correct character. The longest match rule will mean it will prefer
+the entry you have just made.
+
+
+Upper vs lower case - important note regarding `l' and `I'
+----------------------------------------------------------
+
+We maintain separate databases for upper and lower case. At the
+beginning of each cell in the table, we expect uppercase; in the
+middle of a word we expect lowercase; and, unfortunately, after an
+inter-word gap, we are not sure.
+
+This is troublesome because `l' and `I' look identical on the screen.
+So any time we see a word starting with `l' or `I', the program has to
+ask about it.
+
+*Do not* make an entry in the character set database mapping `vertical
+stick' to `l' or `I'. Instead, select enough of the whole word in
+question that no word would start with the other letter, and enter the
+whole word or part of it as a new glyph.
+
+For example, in the supplied database there is already a glyph for
+`Iron'; this is OK because there are no words which start `lron'.
+
+Do not make an entry for a string more than 7 characters long;
+currently we cannot cope (and you'll have to remove it manually from
+the charset-15.txt file).
+
+
+Short inter-word gaps
+---------------------
+
+It can happen that the problem you are being asked about is caused by
+the program failing to spot an inter-word gap and mistakenly thinks
+that the next word is necessarily in lowercase, so fails to recognise
+an uppercase letter. The context in which each glyph was recognised
+is shown on the screen, underneath the text which shows what it was
+recognised as.
+
+*You should check the alleged context before entering a character*.
+If it is wrong, you should fix it, rather that just making an entry
+for the uppercase letter in the lowercase database.
+
+Instead, make a new glyph for the last letter of the previous word
+plus the (unusually narrow) inter-word space, and end that entry with
+\x20 (yes, type \ x 20).
+
+For example, you might find that `y<space>G' is treated as
+`y<??lowercase>' and the G doesn't get matched. Select the `y<space>'
+region of the bitmap and type `y\x20' into the string box.
+Sorry for this rather poor UI!
+
+
+Overlapping characters - ligatures
+----------------------------------
+
+Some of the characters in the font used overlap with the next
+character. When this happens, select both the characters and enter
+them together as one glyph with a multi-character definition.
+
+For example `yw' is rendered with the top right corner of the `y' and
+the top left corner of the `w' overlapping. This is dealt with by
+matching the whole merged thing - select the region of the screen
+containing `yw' and define it as `yw'.
+
+
+Fixing mistakes
+---------------
+
+The OCR query UI allows you to delete things from the glyph database.
+However since you are not guaranteed to actually get an OCR query at
+all if the database contains errors, you shouldn't rely on this.
+
+If you think you have made mistakes answering OCR queries (for
+example, the recognised data is wrong), you should download a fresh
+copy of charset-15.txt from
+ http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/ypp-sc-tools/master/pctb/charset-15.txt
+
+
+Send me your updates
+--------------------
+
+The character set is in the file `charset-15.txt'. When you enter new
+characters, they are added there. If you do this, please email me
+your charset file (ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk) so that I can
+include your contributions in future versions. This will also let me
+check that they seem right :-).
~yarrgweb / ypp-sc-tools.db-test.git / commitdiff