| Well i'm not a Manual writer and English are also not my preferred
| language. But if someone wan't send me descriptions, Howtos or other
| Text parts related to plucker and Windows i do not say no. I include
| this in the distribution, sure :-)
Okee here comes my retouch, there are a couple of comments, probably
should belong to the developer-list.. and I suppose it needs some more
reworking, but lets call it beta and see what the testers out there
say :-)
My comments/thoughts are generally enclosed in brackets [], like:
[There are a couple of long paths given here, couldn't this be
something for plucker to implement in some way, environment variable
of launched app or so. , something like: ]
Well over to the howto, enjoy!
/Andy
Howto
=====
Pluck-comics simply download the comics (pictures) from the web pages,
store the pictures on your HDD and create a simple html page that link
to the pictures.
Config
=======
So if you want to use it, open the pluck-comics.py in a text editor
and setup the default values:
Replace the @COMICSLIST_DIR@ with the place were the comic list are
stored, usually: C:\Program Files\Plucker\Tools\pluck-comics\
[Doesn't sys.argv[0] contain info aobut this?
the relative path from current dir to where
pluck-comics is?]
Replace the @COMICS_DIR@ with the directory of the database created
below, this will be something like: C:\Program Files\Plucker\Comics.DB\
[Can't we get this path from plucker,
either as commandline switch, or
environment, and not hardcoded in the ini-file]
setting up your database
========================
Next step create a new DB using the "Add a new Database" shortcut. In
this example i call this new DB "comics".
Now the tool are ready to use, call:
<ONELONGLINE>
C:\Program Files\Plucker\Python\Python.exe C:\Program
Files\Plucker\Tools\pluck-comics\pluck-comics.py -h comics.com
</ONELONGLINE>
This should now download the comics and place it in the Comics.DB
subdirectory.
If this works as desired go to the channel.ini (C:\Program
Files\Plucker\Comics.DB\plucker.ini) and add a before_command key, for
example:
<ONELONGLINE> $PLUCKERDIR\Python\python.exe $pluckersdir.. -l $databaselocation
before_command=C:\Program Files\Plucker\Python\Python.exe C:\Program
Files\Plucker\Tools\pluck-comics\pluck-comics.py -h comics.com
</ONELONGLINE>
GO
==
So, now if you wan't your comics, simply click the "Hotsync" shortcut
in the DB 'Comics' Shortcut Folder.
This makes the parser to first execute the the script, downloading the
comics, and put them on your hdd.
When the plucker-comics finish the parser continues and grabs the
downloaded comics from you HDD and builds a plucker DB and installs
it.
Since comics usually are big images i suggest you to download version
1.1.11 (see my signature) because there are a better support for large
images.
NOTE: in 1.1.11 the is a little bug in the installer, after install
you need to edit the main ini file (<program
files>\Plucker\plucker.ini).
Search the key bmp_to_tbmp_parameter and change it to:
bmp_to_tbmp_parameter=-i=%input% -o=%output% -maxwidth=%maxwidth%
-maxheight=%maxheight% -compress=%compress% -bpp=%colors%
Optimizing the image
====================
To get the best results (see below) with 1.1.11 add these keys to the
channel.ini:
(Limitation I think you need PalmOS >=3.3 for use the tbmp compression)
tbmp_compression = yes
try_reduce_bpp = true
try_reduce_dimension = true
guess_tbmp_size = false
[What size limits BTW?? Just my (ama) thoughts]
This makes the parser to reduce the colors if the image to big (in
bytes) and if at bpp=1 it is still too big it resizes the
image. Because comics are hard to read if they are scaled down IMHO
this is the best option.
