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
+or
+ ./ypp-commodities --upload
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
--------------------
--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-dictionary Enable dictionary editing. See README.dictionary.
+ --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:
+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
-----------------------
it. Don't try `display vid:#pages#.pnm' as this will consume
truly stupendous quantities of RAM - it wedged my laptop.
- * charset-15.txt
+ * #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.
- Character set dictionary. For the semantics of the contents of this
- file see README.charset. There is not currently any accurate
+ * #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.
- 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.
+ #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
server. This is fetched and updated automatically as necessary.
It can safely be deleted as it will then be refetched.
- * <file>.new
+ * #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>.tmp
When any of these tools overwrite one of the persistent dictionary
- files, they temporarily write to <file>.new.
+ files, they temporarily write to <file>.tmp.
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
+ dictionary-manager
+ commod-results-processor
must (currently) also be in the current directory.
Future versions may have more helpers and more data files.
- 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
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