Forum Scape Project

stage one of my little project to scrape the scripting tips forums has been completed... all Pages with library in the title have been examined for library scripts, and those that didn't just link to offsite or already have obvious mirrors on the LSL_Portal have been archived, per thread, in print view... (printthread instead of showthread)

stage two is a bit longer, and will be the Scripting Library, ignoring moved threads, which should all have been covered in stage one.

ultimately all of these that still compile will be posted to the wiki, assuming LL agrees that the license is compatible, and if I'm ambitious, even posted as sub pages of the writers user space (and library linked)

I have no intention of keeping these when the project is completed, and anyone who wishes to remove any of their personally written content need only check their user page on the LSL_Portal for the link, and delete the page (folks with existing user pages I'll just drop a note on their talk page).

each persons LSL_Portal user page can be found at https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:FirstName_LastName

where FirstName and LastName are your secondlife account name equivalents, for example the address for mine is https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Void_Singer...
if you need to log onto the wiki click "log in" in the upper right corner, and user your second life avatar name (properly capitalized) and your secondlife password.

do NOT edit content that is not on your personal user page unless you know what you are doing and NEVER edit it on someone elses page (other than to add comments to their talk page) if you spot an error on somone's page, the proper course is to leave them a comment.

/me blinks.

Somebody has been busy!

Void, this sounds great. Can you clarify - do you mean you've preserved the scripts on your own personal computer? And then will be posting them to the wiki?

I don't really know the scripting wiki design that well, generally using it only for reference when lslwiki fails me. When you do post them, where on the wiki do we look to find them? Are you just posting them under the relevant scripter's user page, and they have to be found by search if you know their name, or will they be indexed somewhere, so that all the available library scripts can be searched?

('cause for me SL's wiki search returns a lot of useless stuff to wade through before I see what I was looking for)

the hope is to post them to each users page, and link them to the lsl_library page...maybe as a sub category, maybe directly injected to the list... not sure yet.

current they exist on my personal computer... if LL says we can't send them to the library en masse I'll go through and post the ones with a clear public domain statement, before deleting all the copies on my end (I have no need to keep them), and the only one to remain in existence will be those in the potential archive of this forum.

I'll also be adding a page to the Portal, for scripting help sources... people will be able to add forums and there names to that so we can at least have someplace that is directing people to helpful sources...

probably add a section for inworld groups, one I've just started up is targeted at people from these forums that have helped others in the past, open enrollment, I'll try to send out invites soon

I don't think I've ever had my act together enough to post a library script but if you do find one, you have my permission to repost it anywhere & everywhere you like, Void.

TY for taking on this project!!

Void, I have limited wiki experience scattered over the last few years here and there, but I have mastered elementary formatting and page organization in the past. So, if you need help creating an index or anything, let me know.

Void, bless you for this. Thanks.

Brava!

Thank you! It's so important to have those many valuable scripts archived safely. I can't begin to imagine how to go about the task you have taken on.

For myself, I have been trying to cut and paste my way through a stack of code snippets and discussions that I have bookmarked but never saved to my hard drive. Many are yours, Void -- discussions of how ! and ~ differ, for example -- but there are loads from other people in this forum as well. I just wish that I had been more methodical about bookmarking. Unfortunately, I decided somewhere along the line that it would be just as easy to search the archives each time I needed to jog my memory. That leaves me now doing random keyword searches until the clock runs out........

some free help on that front... go to your user CP, up your displayed replies to 40 per page, and when you view the page, replace the word "showthread" with "printthread" in the address, then hit enter to reload... then instead of c&p of snippets, just save the whole page as html...

or write a grease monkey script to replace those words in the forum links.... it's hidden functionality of the VB forum.

Nice tip, Void. Thanks. When I want to preserve indenting in scripts, I still need to cut and paste, but for whole threads this is great.

You can use Eclipse also to reformat scripts, there are plugins for LSL. I use byronstar but there are more I just found out.

guess I should include that grease monkey script... works in the latest Firefox... past that who knows...

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Print Scrape
// @namespace      Private
// @include        http://forums.secondlife.com/search.php*
// ==/UserScript==

  var vLinks = document.evaluate( "//a", document, null, XPathResult. UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null );

  var vCount, vAnchor;
  for (vCount = 0; vCount < vLinks.snapshotLength; vCount++) {
    vAnchor = vLinks.snapshotItem( vCount );
    if (vAnchor.href.indexOf( "showthread.php?t" ) != -1 ){
      vLinks.snapshotItem( vCount ).href = 'http://forums.secondlife.com/printthread.php' + vAnchor.search;
    }
  }

mines only set to rewrite thread links on the "search.php" page... if you add "forumdisplay.php" page it'll do those too, just remember to turn it off for normal thread viewing.

ETA:
it only rewrites the main link, not the button for most recent post, or last post... if you add the printthread.php address it'll also rewrite links within those posts, to keep you in printer friendly view.

Looks like they are making a forum backup, it's terrible today.

library has been successfully scraped.

gona scrape the stickies in content fora too.