FLAG (Fanfiction.net Lightweight Automated Grabber)

[erayd]

Originally Posted by octarineblues

I just noticed something kind of weird in the new renderer with the indents at the beginning of each paragraph. They're present with center-aligned text, too...

Could you provide an example? I don't know any stories with centre-aligned text to test with.

[octarineblues]

Originally Posted by erayd

Could you provide an example? I don't know any stories with centre-aligned text to test with.

Sure. Just snagging a couple from what I was going through before, Hunter has the title center aligned in every chapter, if memory serves, and Letters chapter 16 has a news article a few pages down with the headline center aligned. Hope this helps.

[JaneD]

Originally Posted by erayd

Thanks for finding that - great to know. Do you have an example of a story that exhibits this issue that I can use to test?

The story I downloaded was this one: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6540988/..._You_Dont_Know

It's got a lot of uses of the word "naive" in which the "i" has those two dots over it that are not rendered in the ebook, as well as the accent on the end of the word "naivete." And plenty of italicized words that run into the words following.

Thanks again for this service. I'm often wishing I had one like it for livejournal and other sites - it's so elegant and easy-to-use.

[erayd]

Originally Posted by octarineblues

Sure. Just snagging a couple from what I was going through before, Hunter has the title center aligned in every chapter, if memory serves, and Letters chapter 16 has a news article a few pages down with the headline center aligned. Hope this helps.

Thank you - it looks like the centering is being nuked by tidy when cleaning the scraped HTML. I'll need to change the way tidy is run slightly - watch this space.

Originally Posted by JaneD

It's got a lot of uses of the word "naive" in which the "i" has those two dots over it that are not rendered in the ebook, as well as the accent on the end of the word "naivete." And plenty of italicized words that run into the words following.

Excellent - looks like both issues are already fixed in the new version, although the fix can't be easily ported to the current version of the site without screwing up a bunch of other stuff. If you can live with it for another day or so, I'm porting over the entire new backend to work with the current frontend, rather than just the epub renderer - this problem will vanish once that's done.

Originally Posted by JaneD

Thanks again for this service. I'm often wishing I had one like it for livejournal and other sites - it's so elegant and easy-to-use.

Which sites specifically did you have in mind? I can't promise to implement everything, but the new version is a great deal easier to add extra sources. I want to get everything up and running first, but once that's done I'll consider adding more.

Note that the first one I'll be adding is http://twilighted.net/ - I personally can't stand it, but adding support for this is the request I get the most frequently.

[JaneD]

Livejournal is the one I use the most, but I don't know if it's possible to do it for multi-chapter works on that site. It's got a very different feel to it than ff.net or twilighted.net, as it's journal pages with graphics rather than text-based.

Here's a page of a longer work on livejournal, if you want to check it out: http://community.livejournal.com/plotamari/3575.html

But honestly that's just a feeling I have about the site - I'm no programmer, just an ignorant user.

[erayd]

Hmmm, LiveJournal looks more like a blogging site - each chapter looks like a single, independent post.

Is there anything that links the chapters together, or are they stuck as-is?

I can certainly write a plugin to grab LiveJournal content, but unless there's some way of grouping posts together then I'm afraid it'll probably only be able to grab one at a time.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by erayd

Hmmm, LiveJournal looks more like a blogging site - each chapter looks like a single, independent post.

Is there anything that links the chapters together, or are they stuck as-is?

Sometimes they're connected under a single tag, as with mithen's Music of the Spheres story. They'd need to collect from oldest to newest, and would have the potential of having non-story elements with the same tag (if the author posts an editorial aside with the tag, it'd be included).

Other than that, most LJ stories have links to the next chapter within each chapter; the only way a program could collect them is to have a spot for multiple URLs, because there's no consistent formatting involved.

[erayd]

OK - the full updated backend is now live on the site. Please let me know if you have any issues with it, or have suggestions for improvement.

[Shmrck14]

I just received an iPad as a gift and have installed iBooks and kindle. I want to download from fan fiction.net but have no idea where to start. Any help would be great!

[erayd]

Originally Posted by Shmrck14

I just received an iPad as a gift and have installed iBooks and kindle. I want to download from fan fiction.net but have no idea where to start. Any help would be great!

Where are you getting stuck?

The process to download books is generally pretty simple:

1. Type the story ID into FLAG
2. Choose the desired format type (if you're using Kindle software, this will be Mobi)
3. Click 'Get'

FLAG will fetch the story for you and compile it into an ebook file, then send that file to your browser.

Alternatively, you can have FLAG email the file to you - if you want this, just enter your email address before clicking 'Get'.

[Shmrck14]

Originally Posted by erayd

Where are you getting stuck?

The process to download books is generally pretty simple:

1. Type the story ID into FLAG
2. Choose the desired format type (if you're using Kindle software, this will be Mobi)
3. Click 'Get'

FLAG will fetch the story for you and compile it into an ebook file, then send that file to your browser.

Alternatively, you can have FLAG email the file to you - if you want this, just enter your email address before clicking 'Get'.

I'm so useless I'm stuck at the beginning. I don't know where to type the story ID into FLAG.

[erayd]

Originally Posted by Shmrck14

I'm so useless I'm stuck at the beginning. I don't know where to type the story ID into FLAG.

Type it into the box that is labelled 'Story ID', on this website.

[Shmrck14]

Originally Posted by erayd

Type it into the box that is labelled 'Story ID', on this website.

Got it, thank! Awesome application.

[erayd]

Originally Posted by Shmrck14

Got it, thank! Awesome application.

No worries - glad you've got it sorted .

[erayd]

FictionPress is now supported.