AD&D Core Rules CD Importer for HTML files

[celestian]

Really nice work, Celestian. I have not been able to locate my Core Rules CD in a long time, but it really doesn't matter because the only reason I'd ever go back to anything WotC would maybe be SpellJammer.

I'd like to eventually do something equivalent for PDFs (Acrobat Reader has an API that lets you select text, copy it, and so on), but the best you could get there would still be without any formatting whatsoever, and it would still have the infamous PDF carriage return problem (but that is not that hard to fix in code). I have never owned the full version of Acrobat, so I am not sure if that version lets you copy character formatting or just the raw text.

Yeah this project is very narrow in it's scope unfortunately. There isn't any other version of the game that had html files that are so easy to parse... easy being relative, more so than PDF! Although thinking about it I could probably do something with the SRD/OGL by sucking down the website pages. Either way it's not window click and drag tool. The importer assumes you have a good bit of knowledge on how to mess with perl, at the very least to install it and modules.

That said a lot of the logic, in theory, could be of use for other versions depending on the source content.

I'm just happy it's worked out... I've got a load of books now for my players to use during my games. Now to decide if I wanna use handbooks or not

[Myrdin Potter]

I hit a wall on the PERL part. One of the functions needed just refused to install. I am using PERL via Windows 10 as do not have a linux box up and running now and not enough time in the day to resurrect one of my old ones.

[celestian]

I hit a wall on the PERL part. One of the functions needed just refused to install. I am using PERL via Windows 10 as do not have a linux box up and running now and not enough time in the day to resurrect one of my old ones.

I've been fortunate enough to not have to setup perl on a Windows box. If I ever get the time (hah!) maybe I'll give it a spin and work it out with some instructions.

I have Workstation Pro on windows with a VM running Centos which is where I do all my perl ... with CPAN it's way easier. I think Windows comes with Hyper-V? That should work to create a VM also... Tho it might require Windows Pro?

[Andraax]

ActivePerl

[celestian]

ActivePerl

I poked around with this a bit and everything (module wise) installed just fine except HTML::Tidy. Looked around to try and find a fix and I couldn't find one. The author blew it off as "not a high priority" but another person said you needed to install a dependency (which I couldn't find the name of).

I'll loop back at it when I have more time. It did seem pretty simple to use and I did notice some Windows eccentricities in my script I've coded around.

[Myrdin Potter]

That is where I got stopped - Tidy did not install.

[celestian]

That is where I got stopped - Tidy did not install.

Man, I need to let these things drop but they keep pricking my conscious and I have to go back and work on it.

So, I figured out a way to do this.

Start cpan

cpan> install KMX/Alien-Tidyp-v1.4.7.tar.gz
cpan> install HTML::Tidy

Now, the first one should install with no problems. When I ran install HTML::Tidy it complained a test didn't work... so what I did was go into the directory of cpan.

cpan\build\HTML-Tidy-1.60-6nsqtQ (note the 6nsqtQ part will be different, it's not a static value)
within the "cpan\build\HTML-Tidy-1.60-6nsqtQ" directory type "dmake install"

It'll complete and after that the corebook-html.pl file should run.

perl corebook-html.pl PHB PlayersHandbook

"PHB" path assumes you've copied the core rules WebHelp\* directories

Once it finishes it'll create 3 files, PlayersHandbook.xml, PlayersHandbook_skills.xml, PlayersHandbook.client.xml,

The contents of the first 2 XML files can be placed into the proper section of a db.xml file and it should show in the AD&D Core ruleset. The last one is a client.xml file for a refmanual. It'll need the "<library>" link section (this is something Im going to add to this process down the road) and the definitions.xml... both of which are fairly static.

add this to the clients.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<root version="3.3" release="8|CoreRPG:3">

	<library>
		<add2e static="true">
			<categoryname type="string">2e</categoryname>
			<name type="string">AD&D 2e Players Handbook</name>
			<entries>
				<ref_000001>
					<librarylink type="windowreference">
						<class>reference_manual</class>
						<recordname>reference.refmanualindex</recordname>
					</librarylink>
					<name type="string">Players Handbook</name>
				</ref_000001>
			</entries>
        </add2e>
    </library>

<!-- ADD THE REFERENCE section from the import below here. -->

</root>

definitions.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<root version="3.3" release="8|CoreRPG:3">
	<name>AD&D 2e PHB Reference</name>
	<category>2e</category>
	<author>version 1.0</author>
	<ruleset>AD&D Core</ruleset>
</root>

Drop the client.xml and definitions.xml files into a directory in your FG/data/modules path and load FG, it should show the refmanual at that point.

[damned]

Well done celestian.

[Myrdin Potter]

Will take a look at getting the perl ready.

[celestian]

Updated the README.md in the github repo to better explain the process of getting the imported data (xml file) into FG as a ref-manual.