Batch Import Custom Smileys

[browner87]

I found myself looking at a very unpleasant task the other day - manually importing 131 custom emotes from MSN. I read around on the Internet and only found some spanish website that expected me to give them a copy of everything in a zip file and who knows what it would do then, so I started reading about doing it manually. Simple enough stuff, rename the MCOs to CABs, extract them all to seperate folders, then just rename the PNG and GIF files to the names you want and put a bit of simple XML in a config file. YOU try doing that for 131 emoticons by hand!

So me, being a programmer, started looking for a way to automate such a redundant process. I found some simple scripting ideas online, and made up a few simple CSH scripts to do all this work for me

My Question here is: if I were to compile all my separate bits and pieces that I used to do all this into one simple CSH script that anyone can run on Linux, would people be interested? The ONLY thing that I haven't managed to automate is the extracting which I used WinRAR for, but I expect I could find some way to extract them from CSH without too much effort. The only thing that I don't imagine would be easy would be the obtaining of the MCO files. But I found MSN Backup worked great (although it IS a Windows program. I'm not sure if there are any good linux ones).

So, would this be worth a bit of my time to do?

[kakaroto]

Hi,
This sucks that you had to do all this manually... actually, if you search the forums, you'll find a couple of scripts that actually do this for you already.
First, having a Tcl script.. more specifically, having an aMSN plugin would be a much better solution, it would make things much easier for everyone (you would just need to call amsn's internal function and the emoticon would be added automatically), there would be no need for 'you have to close amsn first' or for the 'here are the config keys, now paste that xml into your config.xml file', etc...
and more importantly, having it as an amsn plugin would make everyone happy not just linux users... there are some windows and mac users who want to batch add their smileys too... but every script there is for bash only...
About the .mco, you could have used 'cabextract' to extract the files.. you can look at how the winks plugin does to detect cabextract and use it, etc... for windows, there's a native alternative, which is extrac32.exe
Hope that helps!

[browner87]

So, there are other scripts written? Has anyone written it as a plugin though? If not, what language or scripting are aMSN plugins written in? I know VB, C, C++, PHP, and some random different scripting languages.


OK - they're written in TCL, I can deal with that  guess, but to make sure I'm not missing something and doing this for nothing, is there already a plugin for this?

[kakaroto]

Hi,
yes there are other scripts, but unfortunately, no, there are no plugins written for this task.
plugins are written in Tcl which is a fairly simple and easy to learn language.
If you'd like to work on this, we would be grateful! you can find information here : http://www.amsn-project.net/wiki/Dev:Plugin_Developer_Guide
and here : http://www.amsn-project.net/wiki/Dev:TclTk_Tutorial

[kakaroto]

Maybe consider this : http://www.amsn-project.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6319
If there are some 'emoticon packs' available, maybe having the plugin use the same format would be beneficial for everyone!
btw, how's the plugin development going?


EDIT: by the way, I just wrote the skeleton for the plugin!!
Here's the code : http://amsn.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/amsn/trunk/amsn-extras/plugins/emoticons_importer/
Basically, all that's needed now is to add the UI in the populareframe function to actually let the user browse a directory and have it autoload the files from there...
I might do that later tonight if I feel bored!

EDIT2 path updated, I renamed the plugin and also added a "importSmileys" function that will batch import them all either by using the kopete compatible emoticon pack, or by searching for files in the directory.. it still needs work, like in case an error happens, tell the user and let him fix it somehow, etc... and yes, there is still no UI for it. The only way to test now is to load the plugin, open amsn's console (ctrl-shift-C) and type :

Code:

::emoticons_importer::importSmileys /path/to/some/directory

EDIT3: I was more bored than expected.. and now the plugin is usable by mere mortals... there's a small UI to choose a path and allow you to import smileys from it, there's no feedback (unless you look at the plugins log), but in theory you click 'import smileys' and after a little while your smileys are added.

[browner87]

Well, I'll get to it then. I didn't see responses for a little bit, so I passed on it, but I'll look at your skeleton code and get started on it as soon as I can find time. If only I was still in high school and getting March break next week...

[kakaroto]

hehe, i know the 'if i was still in high school' feeling! Anyways, yes you can use my current code, it's not really a 'skeleton' code anymore, but it still has room for improvement!
Thanks

[Smart]

I have installed amsn-plugins-svn but I don't see in aMSN

Account / Select Plugins

emoticons-updater


but it is in /usr

ls -l /usr/share/amsn/plugins | grep emoticons
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-18 11:10 emoticons_importer

Use Gentoo

[kakaroto]

It shouldn't be in /usr/share/amsn/plugins... anyways, make sure you download the amsn-extras/plugins repository correctly and install the plugins in ~/.amsn/plugins
It should work.

[Smart]

I have all Plugins in /usr and all works only emoticons_importer isn't in "Select Plugins"

I have all copied to ~/.amsn/plugins

Restarted aMSN but the same, emoticons_importer is'not in Select Plugin. :oops:

I have install now the newest SVN Repository.

ls -l /usr/share/amsn/plugins
total 184
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 actionsmenu
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 address_book
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 advancedconfigviewer
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 amsnplus
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 bugbuddy
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 camserv
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 chameleon
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 changeit
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:21 ColoredNicks
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 colorize
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 countdown
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 dbusviewer
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 desktop_integration
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 devel
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 DualDisplayPicture
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 emotes
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 emoticons_importer
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 FPSstats
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 games
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 gename
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 glogs
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 gnotify
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 growl
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:21 inkdraw
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 keepalive
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 LilyPondIM
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 movewin
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:21 MSNGameTTT
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 music
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:21 Notes
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 notify
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:21 Nudge
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 organize_received
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 pop3
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:21 remind
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:21 Restore
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 sayit
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:21 SearchContact
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 SkinColor
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 SpellCheck
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 TeXIM
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 transparent
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 userstatus
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:21 WebcamShooter
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:22 whatis
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-03-20 02:21 winks


svn update
At revision 11102.

ls -l /usr/portage/distfiles/svn-src/amsn-plugins/plugins/emoticons_importer
total 16
-rw-rw-r-- 1 paludisbuild paludisbuild 8149 2009-03-15 11:24 emoticons_importer.tcl
drwxrwsr-x 3 paludisbuild paludisbuild 4096 2009-03-15 11:24 lang
-rw-rw-r-- 1 paludisbuild paludisbuild 1453 2009-03-15 11:24 plugininfo.xml

I think is something with Plugin Name in files perhaps?

Regards,

[kakaroto]

humm.. I don't know why it wouldn't work.. the directory name doesn't really matter, the plugin will appear as "Emoticons importer" or something like that (the real name is set in plugininfo.xml).
make sure permissions are correct and you can read the files correctly.

[redeath]

Hi actually the xml is written incorrectly that why it is not showing up.

One of the </lang> is missing.

[BaaaZen]

Thanks, it's fixed.

[kakaroto]

ouh, nice catch! I wonder why i could see it.. oh, maybe someone committed that <lang> thing after I wrote the plugin!
Thanks for finding the cause! And welcome to the forums by the way (very nice first post! )