Autocard question

[Aswan jaguar]

Is there a way for autocard to show special characters,flipped cards,double faced etc...

[Korath]

I'll echo this. Split (Fire // Ice), flippable (Nezumi Graverobber // Nighteyes the Desecrator), and double-faced cards (Chalice of Life // Chalice of Death) haven't worked since I started paying attention here. I seem to recall that cards with accents used to work if you translated them to the equivalent ascii, e.g. Oath of Lim-Dûl to Oath of Lim-Dul or Juzám Djinn to Juzam Djinn, but they definitely don't now.

Plus, matching at the start of a post is a bit wonky. If a post starts with a card name (Lightning Axe), it won't be highlit; if it starts with a letter then a card name with no space in between (aLightning Axe), the card will be improperly highlit; and if a post starts with either "A " or "a ", then no cards anywhere in the post will be highlit. Symptoms seem to match a "\a" in the regex not being properly escaped.

[Huggybaby]

Goblin Hero wrote the autocard software, you could send him a PM.

[Korath]

Goblin Hero's sent me the source and data, and I've started poking at it. Split/flippable/double-faced cards turned out to be easy, and I've sent him a fix.

Other issues (which I mostly haven't even begun to investigate):

1. Start of post "A " and "a " disables all matching.
2. Card name at the very start of a post isn't matched.
3. A card name starting in the second character of a post is matched, even if it's not at a word boundary.
4. Card names with apostrophes aren't matched within spoiler tags. (I won't be able to debug this directly.) Test case: Giant Growth Gaea's Liege

   both should match within | Open

   Giant Growth Gaea's Liege

5. Cards with any but a few non-alphabetic characters don't get matched. SELECT name FROM oracle WHERE name NOT RLIKE '^[A-Z][A-Za-z ,'':|-]*[A-Za-z'']$'; gives me:

   Unhighlit cards | Open

   1996 World Champion
   B.F.M.
   Borrowing 100,000 Arrows
   Bösium Strip
   Chicken à la King
   Dandân
   Denied!
   Déjà Vu
   El-Hajjâj
   Erase (Not the Urza's Legacy One)
   Framed!
   Ghazbán Ogre
   Ghazbán Ogress
   Goblin S.W.A.T. Team
   Guan Yu's 1,000-Li March
   Ifh-Bíff Efreet
   Incoming!
   Junún Efreet
   Juzám Djinn
   Jötun Grunt
   Jötun Owl Keeper
   Kaboom!
   Khabál Ghoul
   Kill! Destroy!
   Kongming, "Sleeping Dragon"
   Land Aid '04
   Legions of Lim-Dûl
   Lim-Dûl the Necromancer
   Lim-Dûl's Cohort
   Lim-Dûl's Hex
   Lim-Dûl's High Guard
   Lim-Dûl's Paladin
   Lim-Dûl's Vault
   Look at Me, I'm R&D
   Mine, Mine, Mine!
   Márton Stromgald
   Oath of Lim-Dûl
   Pang Tong, "Young Phoenix"
   Question Elemental?
   R&D's Secret Lair
   Richard Garfield, Ph.D.
   Ring of Ma'rûf
   S.N.O.T.
   Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII
   Sauté
   Séance
   The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service
   To Arms!
   _____
   "Ach! Hans, Run!"

   (Those match up exactly to what I'm seeing from comprehensive tests against the supplied data, except that Look at Me, I'm R&D and R&D's Secret Lair work locally; I suspect their problem on-site - besides that they have apostrophes and are within a spoiler tag above, per bug #4 - is early expansion of the ampersand to &.) I don't anticipate any problem with matching accents, except perhaps at the start or end of a card name. Most of the remainder seem to be from unsets, so I'm less concerned with them.
6. Cards with commas in their names don't highlight if preceded by a capitalized word (Test Emrakul, the Aeons Torn) (test Emrakul, the Aeons Torn). Cards without commas are ok (Test Spawnsire of Ulamog). Seen in the wild here.

Any other problems that I'm not remembering?

More tests: Æther Barrier AEther Barrier Gaea´s Liege Gaea’s Liege

[silly freak]

I have no Idea how the autocard works, but couldn't you fix 2, 3, 4 quick and dirty by adding a space before autocard processing, and removing it afterwards?

[Goblin Hero]

Cards with any but a few non-alphabetic characters don't get matched.

I can modify my database to replace accented characters with the normal ones. I think it will simplify the script.

[Korath]

The accents should be fixable in the query by altering collation. This way, Juzám Djinn and Juzam Djinn would both get highlit, which is a clear win; on the other hand, so would Jüzâm Djíñn. Apparently mysql doesn't have a case-sensitive, accent-insensitive collation for utf8, which is an annoyance; so I'm also getting "JuzAm djinN" highlit in my tests. First letter still needs to be capitalized - "juzAm djinN" remains unhighlit - so maybe that's acceptable.

The more difficult issue with 5 isn't the accent characters, but the numerals, exclamation marks, and other punctuation; changing the data won't help those cases.

I have no Idea how the autocard works, but couldn't you fix 2, 3, 4 quick and dirty by adding a space before autocard processing, and removing it afterwards?

2 and 3 perhaps, though I'd rather find out why they get mismatched and fix it properly. 4's unrelated.

I also have a tentative fix for issue 1 ("A " at start of post). Will send it along in a day or two, once I get a chance to look at the others more closely.

[silly freak]

ah, typo, I meant 1, 2 and 3. after adding a space, the post wouldn't begin with "a " of course

[Korath]

I've sent fixes for 1-3.

Irritatingly, I can't get the accented strings to match anymore by changing collation, just the unaccented ones, and I can't figure out what I'm doing differently from before. So maybe changing the data would be better after all.

My only guess for #4 is that, looking at the generated html, the apostrophe in Gaea's Liege gets translated to ' within the spoiler tag, but apostrophes outside it (whether as part of a card name or not) don't. So maybe replacing that entity in _mtgPrepareName(), the same way ’ is, might work. 3 and 9 will need to be added to the whitelist of allowed characters in mtgParseString() as well. (Probably the rest of the digits should; 0 and 4 will need to be added for Borrowing 100,000 Arrows, Guan Yu's 1,000-Li March, and Land Aid '04 in any case.)

[Goblin Hero]

I've sent fixes for 1-3.

Applied.

So maybe replacing that entity in _mtgPrepareName(), the same way ’ is, might work.

It worked. Also I've extended the string with the possible symbols to "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz-'’.,!;/&#1234567890" so it closes some of the cases.

[Korath]

The most recent changes broke this post; all the cards in the middle section except Your Inescapable Doom were highlit earlier today. Looks like the comma newly added to the whitelist is to blame.

[Goblin Hero]

Looks like the comma newly added to the whitelist is to blame.

Oops. Removed the comma.

[Korath]

The period's also causing problems - it causes cards to be matched correctly mid-sentence, but not at the end of one. For example, Giant Growth and Giant Growth. I expect ! will work the same, though it'll be rarer. ; and ' already had the same problem: you should be able to write Giant Growth; and should also be able to talk about Giant Growth's implementation, and have them be highlit.

They'll all need to be handled special, similar to (but not identical to) the way , and : already are. I'll try to take a look tomorrow or this weekend.

The 0 match isn't functional, due to php's... creative... comparison semantics. It either needs to be moved away from the last character of the whitelist (anything else will work fine at the end), or the comparison changed from != FALSE to !== FALSE. This only fixes Land Aid '04, though, not Borrowing 100,000 Arrows or Guan Yu's 1,000-Li March (even if the comma is put back).

[Korath]

The problematic accented card names for testing purposes, outside of spoiler tag (which changes them, annoyingly enough)

1996 World Champion
B.F.M.
Borrowing 100,000 Arrows
Bösium Strip Bosium Strip
Chicken à la King Chicken a la King
Dandân Dandan
Denied!
Déjà Vu Deja Vu
El-Hajjâj El-Hajjaj
Erase (Not the Urza's Legacy One)
Framed!
Ghazbán Ogre Ghazban Ogre
Ghazbán Ogress Ghazban Ogress
Goblin S.W.A.T. Team
Guan Yu's 1,000-Li March
Ifh-Bíff Efreet Ifh-Biff Efreet
Incoming!
Junún Efreet Junun Efreet
Juzám Djinn Juzam Djinn
Jötun Grunt Jotun Grunt
Jötun Owl Keeper Jotun Owl Keeper
Kaboom!
Khabál Ghoul Khabal Ghoul
Kill! Destroy!
Kongming, "Sleeping Dragon"
Land Aid '04
Legions of Lim-Dûl Legions of Lim-Dul
Lim-Dûl the Necromancer Lim-Dul the Necromancer
Lim-Dûl's Cohort Lim-Dul's Cohort
Lim-Dûl's Hex Lim-Dul's Hex
Lim-Dûl's High Guard Lim-Dul's High Guard
Lim-Dûl's Paladin Lim-Dul's Paladin
Lim-Dûl's Vault Lim-Dul's Vault
Look at Me, I'm R&D
Mine, Mine, Mine!
Márton Stromgald Marton Stromgald
Oath of Lim-Dûl Oath of Lim-Dul
Pang Tong, "Young Phoenix"
Question Elemental?
R&D's Secret Lair
Richard Garfield, Ph.D.
Ring of Ma'rûf Ring of Ma'ruf
S.N.O.T.
Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII
Sauté Saute
Séance Seance
The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service
To Arms!
_____
"Ach! Hans, Run!"

[Goblin Hero]

Korath's request is implemented. Now autocard works with Planes/Heroes/other nontraditional cards.
Hydra Head Onakke Catacomb Nature Shields Its Own