cut and paste the announcement emails into yoweb-scrape.txt

diff --git a/TODO b/TODO
index a8b7c69526ef34fa5f0cbe4f872df20f3ddbe1ca..17e32cbbae3beff1e36bb81fbc59cf8d3bb6e50b 100644 (file)
--- a/TODO
+++ b/TODO
@@ -5,4 +5,4 @@ yoweb-scrape
        parse officer chat for
                /off /a [<ship>:] <pirate>...
                /off /d [<ship>:] <pirate>...
-       cut and paste info and stuff from mails into here
+       improve the docs

diff --git a/yoweb-scrape.txt b/yoweb-scrape.txt
new file mode 100644 (file)
index 0000000..b0ac2bb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/yoweb-scrape.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,102 @@
+Ian Jackson writes ("Choice of vessel for pillaging"):
+> What I really want is something that redacts it into a table (ideally,
+> by trawling the chat log).  I don't suppose someone fancies writing
+> the yoweb screenscraper :-) ?
+
+Here it is.  You run it like this:
+  ./yoweb-scrape ship-aid ~/yohoho/Aristarchus_midnight_chat-log-iwj 
+It has various other modes - see the usage message.
+
+Key features:
+
+ * Tracks boarding and departure of pirates and shows a table
+   of currently-aboard pirates with their relevant puzzle standings in
+   a compressed format.
+
+ * Shows time and nature their last interaction with you as XO
+   (abandoning stations, being given orders) and where and when their
+   last to-you-visible chat was.
+
+ * Remembers whether you have ever given the pirate an order to gun
+   since they boarded.
+
+ * Caches and severely rate-limits fetches from yoweb to avoid
+   overloading the Three Rings servers.  In ship-aid mode, will
+   display twirling batons while you wait for data, so that crew
+   on board info remains correct.
+
+I know of one key defect:
+
+ * If you leave and then reboard a vessel, the list of pirates on
+   board may be wrong.  This is because the chat log doesn't contain
+   the necessary information.  The script assumes that the set of
+   pirates on board doesn't change while you're off the ship (unless
+   you're away for more than an hour, in which case it assumes the
+   ship is empty when you return to it).
+
+   This means that there needs to be a way to manually add and remove
+   pirates - but there isn't.  I think this could probably be added by
+   someone who could be bothered to replace the `sleep 1' in the main
+   loop by something which looked for keyboard input.
+
+   However it will notice that a pirate is on board if they abandon a
+   duty station (in circumstances where the game reports this in the
+   log, which doesn't seem to be all the time) or you give them a
+   stationing order, and from various other messages that might occur.
+
+Other things to mention:
+
+ * There's nothing really resembling a manual.
+
+ * It doesn't notice when you yourself disembark.  That's because
+   that's not recorded in the chat log.
+
+ * Many people may find the output rather basic - it's ASCII art - and
+   it's not very customisable.
+
+ * It spends a while reading the whole of your chat log which can be
+   very long.  Perhaps it should be 
+
+ * It could have lots more features in general.
+
+ * The `tabulate details of my whole crew' mode takes a long time
+   to run.  This is normal; it's trying to spread the load on yoweb
+   (perhaps excessively so).
+
+ * I have it in git right now but here is just a copy of the single
+   file which is the script.  I'm planning to put my rum calculator
+   and other useful things into the same repo and put it on chiark
+   somewhere.  For my reference, this is from tree revision
+     15799130f8d34856b9cefe3c71103564413fa04a
+
+ * I haven't decided on a final copyright licence.  You may treat this
+   version as GPLv3.
+
+Ian.
+
+
+
+Ian Jackson writes ("Re: Choice of vessel for pillaging"):
+> Ian Jackson writes ("Choice of vessel for pillaging"):
+> > What I really want is something that redacts it into a table (ideally,
+> > by trawling the chat log).  I don't suppose someone fancies writing
+> > the yoweb screenscraper :-) ?
+> 
+> Here it is.  You run it like this:
+>   ./yoweb-scrape ship-aid ~/yohoho/Aristarchus_midnight_chat-log-iwj 
+> It has various other modes - see the usage message.
+
+A couple more things:
+
+ * Please don't leave it running if you're not in charge.  If
+   everyone runs this it will produce precisely the load on the yoweb
+   servers that we want to avoid.
+ * It's Python so it may eat CPU and memory.
+ * You may need to install some python modules of course.
+ * Here's a version which is an attachment rather than asking you
+   to cut-and-paste.  That will save on you mangling it and getting
+   weird python errors.
+
+Ian.
+
+yoweb-scrape as a binary blobule, y [Press RETURN to save to a file]