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 --upload
+to upload to the PCTB server. Currently we use pctb.ilk.org,
+the testing instance of the PCTB database, pending approval from the
+operators of the main server.
+
+Or, for example, for a tab-separated values dump:
./ypp-commodities --tsv >commods.tsv
While it is capturing the screenshots, do not move the mouse or use
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
+ --screenshot-file F Store or read screenshots in F rather than _pages.ppm
--window-id ID Specified X window is the YPP client - do not search
- --edit-dictionary Enable dictionary editing. See README.dictionary.
-
-Controlling what happens to the results:
+ --edit-charset Enable character set editing. See README.dictionary.
+ --no-edit-charset Do not edit charset even if _local-char*.txt exists.
+ --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.
-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 dictionary. For the semantics of the contents of this
- file see README.charset. There is not currently any accurate
- documentation of this dictionary 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 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
- yppsc-ocr-resolver
- yppsc-commod-processor
-must (currently) also be in the current directory.
-
-Future versions may have more helpers and more data files.
+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}
Installation requirements
-------------------------
+Your X server must be 24bpp (or better).
+
This program has quite a few dependencies:
Package (Debian etch)
- 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
- 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.
+these should be roughly right for Debian and its derivatives. You can
+install them with this rune:
+ sudo apt-get install build-essential libnetpbm10-dev netpbm libx11-dev libxtst-dev libpcre3-dev tk8.4 libxml-parser-perl libjson-perl
+
+
+The supplied helper programs
+ dictionary-manager
+ commod-results-processor
+ database-info-fetch
+must (currently) also be in the current working directory when you run
+the main ypp-commodities program.
+
+The data files (see README.files) are also left in the current working
+directory. There is notyet any feature to have the data files and
+helpers be somewhere else.
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
+screenshot file called `_pages.ppm'. 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.
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
+_pages.ppm, 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
-----------------------
+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.
+upload data. It will do that if you run it with --upload.
-However, there are some improvements which I may introduce in the
-future which may change this. I am considering:
+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.
- * 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.
+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.
- * Having the upload client upload a copy of the data to a server run
- by me, when run in --upload mode.
+See README.privacy for full details.
-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
~yarrgweb / ypp-sc-tools.main.git / blobdiff