PRD in text, rtf, doc format?

[Mok]

Is there a text or rtf format for the PFSRD anywhere? Sure we have the main PRD, and even the wonderful pfsrd.org, and I even have the PDFs, but I'd like to be able to use a copy that isn't in html format and is easy to copy and paste without a lot of formatting issues, such as from the pdf.

I like to make encounter sheets for monsters so that I get all of the information crammed onto one sheet and life would be easier if I was just working with a strait document file and then not have to deal with reformatting all the time.

[hogarth]

This is something that I would love, too. Right now I'm tottering along with a .pdf -> .txt conversion of the PRD, but it's a poor substitute.

[d20pfsrd.com]

Mok wrote:

Is there a text or rtf format for the PFSRD anywhere? Sure we have the main PRD, and even the wonderful pfsrd.org, and I even have the PDFs, but I'd like to be able to use a copy that isn't in html format and is easy to copy and paste without a lot of formatting issues, such as from the pdf.

I like to make encounter sheets for monsters so that I get all of the information crammed onto one sheet and life would be easier if I was just working with a strait document file and then not have to deal with reformatting all the time.

I might be able to get someone on the site to try to whip something up. No promises though. By the way, did you know that the monster pages in the bestiary on d20pfsrd.com have a "Print This Page" function that strips out a lot of unneeded stuff? Every page on the site has that feature actually. The link is in the upper left area of every page. See if that helps with formatting monster pages. It doesn't however, always fit everything on one page though.

[Mok]

Thanks!

The "print this page" is a great feature, I can see people getting use out of it.

I'm more obsessed with ink cost, so in part I'm trying to get it to a format that doesn't have any hyperlinks, graphics, colored headers, etc.

I guess the magic formula I'm trying to find is to be able to have stat blocks but the only "fancy" formatting would be the bolded text in the stat blocks. But even unbolded and just strait text would save hours of formatting in my obsessive GM desires.

I should have taken some computer science classes back in college. It wouldn't surprise me if someone was able to say, "oh with PERL I'd be able to extract all of that out of the bestiary in just a couple of minutes!"

[brock]

Mok wrote:

Thanks!

I should have taken some computer science classes back in college. It wouldn't surprise me if someone was able to say, "oh with PERL I'd be able to extract all of that out of the bestiary in just a couple of minutes!"

More than a few minutes, but yeah, that could be done.

So, you'd want a script to visit every monster link on the 'Monsters by CR' page, for example, and then generate a plain text (plus bold) version of each monster stat block on the pages linked to, and then save it in a text file with the monsters name?

[d20pfsrd.com]

Hey Brock - if you do that can you save the output into a txt or rtf file and put it in the Downloads section on the site? (I believe you are already a collaborator... lol)

[Guillaume Godbout]

Mok wrote:

I guess the magic formula I'm trying to find is to be able to have stat blocks but the only "fancy" formatting would be the bolded text in the stat blocks. But even unbolded and just strait text would save hours of formatting in my obsessive GM desires.

Well as for that precise wish, you don't necessarily need any unformated file, if you are using any current word processor. You can use the Paste special usually found under the Edit menu. There is an option to paste the content of the clipboard unformated. That is what I use when I'm copying stats blocks from either the web or a pdf and I want to format it with my personal styles.

[brock]

d20pfsrd.com wrote:

Hey Brock - if you do that can you save the output into a txt or rtf file and put it in the Downloads section on the site? (I believe you are already a collaborator... lol)

I certainly will. I'll try and hack on this while the other stuff I'm working on is busy running - I don't think I've had a day this year when I've not worked for at least part of it.

I wrote something similar to spider the WotC site when they announced 3ed in case they started removing 3ed stuff straight away. Hopefully I can pillage some of that code.

[d20pfsrd.com]

brock wrote:

d20pfsrd.com wrote:

Hey Brock - if you do that can you save the output into a txt or rtf file and put it in the Downloads section on the site? (I believe you are already a collaborator... lol)

I certainly will. I'll try and hack on this while the other stuff I'm working on is busy running - I don't think I've had a day this year when I've not worked for at least part of it.

I wrote something similar to spider the WotC site when they announced 3ed in case they started removing 3ed stuff straight away. Hopefully I can pillage some of that code.

It's certainly not comparable to anything you are likely to generate but I took the nice PDF on our site and saved the text to a text file and am running it through some Word find & replaces real quick just to strip out erroneous page numbers etc. As I said, it will be far from ideal but who knows, some might find some use out of it lol. I'll put it in the downloads section of the site as soon as Word is done "repaginating the file" lol

[Mok]

Guillaume Godbout wrote:

Well as for that precise wish, you don't necessarily need any unformated file, if you are using any current word processor. You can use the Paste special usually found under the Edit menu. There is an option to paste the content of the clipboard unformated. That is what I use when I'm copying stats blocks from either the web or a pdf and I want to format it with my personal styles.

Yeah, I normally use that in Open Office. It works fine, though it does strip out the formatting I want to keep, like bolding.

When I copy and paste from pdfs the main problem is that the line breaks remain, even though I'll strip out all of the formatting. Then I have to find & replace, putting codes in to strip out the line breaks.

In the end, none of it is hard, it's just a lot of fussy formatting that adds up over time.

A plain text of stat blocks would work fine, the bolding is merely an extra perk to help break up the text so it's easier to find stuff.

Overall I tend to spend a lot of time prepping for games because I loath every picking up a book when GMing. I like my pacing to remain snappy. Also, I find Pathfinder Society modules run too long for the allotted time, so shaving off as much time as possible for reference is essential. That's why getting all of the relevant information on the encounter on one page can be really helpful. If there are multiple monsters then I try and cram all the stat blocks on one page, along with key spell descriptions and other niggily rules.

But yeah, if anyone can whip up some textish format of the stat blocks that would help save me a lot of time and be much appreciated!

Thanks!

[azhrei_fje]

Sounds like you actually want an intelligent screen scraper for HTML.

In order to get all of the 3.5 spells into MapTool as macros, I wrote an XSL transform that read in the spells from d20srd.org and spit out the macro instructions for MapTool. Click the macro button and a dockable window pops open that has the spell description in it with precalc'd save DC and links for (most of) the dice rolls.

It's not perfect, but Jans had already done most of the real work for his web site. "Standing on the shoulders of giants," as they say. :)

[brock]

azhrei_fje wrote:

Sounds like you actually want an intelligent screen scraper for HTML.

That's exactly what I want, however I started to get lost at 'XSL'... I understand the theory, but I wouldn't know how to go down that route in practice. I was just going to manually parse the HTML in Perl using regexps.

Any info on the XSL method would be great.

[azhrei_fje]

brock wrote:

azhrei_fje wrote:

Sounds like you actually want an intelligent screen scraper for HTML.

That's exactly what I want, however I started to get lost at 'XSL'... I understand the theory, but I wouldn't know how to go down that route in practice. I was just going to manually parse the HTML in Perl using regexps.

Any info on the XSL method would be great.

(Stupid forum software! It ate my post!)

So a shorter one here since the browser didn't keep it for me either. :(

Go to http://www.eeconsulting.net/maptool/ and grab spellMacros.zip to get my Makefile and all of the supporting scripts. You can check the comments at the top of the Makefile for an overview. You will need Bash, Perl, and Xsltproc as well as basic utilities (sed, mkdir, rm, etc).

Create a directory named 1-spells and run the downloadSpells.sh script in that directory. This step is manual because I don't want the Makefile redoing the download every time. :)

Now go back to the original directory and run "make". Processing the XSL doesn't take long at all (you'll see a series of dots as it does each spell). You don't really need to let the make continue to run once the _convert.sh script is done. In fact it will fail when it tries to create the MapTool token since I didn't put a sample token in the zip file.

What you want to do is compare the files in 1-spells/ against the ones in 2-macro/ to see what the XSL did. Once you have a handle on that, you might be able to edit the _exemplar.xsl stylesheet to make it do what you want.

If you have any questions, my email address is at the top of the Makefile. Good luck with this -- XSL is not for the faint of heart!

[Mok]

Just checking back in to see if anyone had success with the magical scripting powers :)