Gatherer Downloader App (v1.6.8) [hq pics / card database]

[Ark]

v1.0.4 - Ok, I added "&special=true" to the text spoiler and compact spoiler URLs. I don't think that will break anything normal, and it will let you see Vanguard/Plane/Scheme cards if you really want. Don't expect Fulls or Crops to work with odd sized cards though. Originals will be just fine though.

I also added ": -" to ":" translation for all the card text boxes along with the 30 or so other little fixes just like that. I can't think of any legitimate place ": -" would need to appear anyway.

[Moonstone]

What a reactivity And it works like a charm.

Thanks!

[manaman22]

Ark,

Great program you have here. I have been looking for something like for quite awhile. I like the control it offers over the output and that it directly queries Gatherer. This will make errata changes and set updates so much easier. I do like the user-customizable list of sets. Where do you get the set code for when new sets come out?

I have found a way to use VBA and Excel 2010 with your "Excel .csv" format to open the file automatically and properly. Apparently the difference between double-clicking the file and opening it from Excel has to do with the method it uses to open the file. When opening from Excel, it sees the file as a .csv and uses the Workbooks.OpenText method to open the file. This creates problems with the multiple-line cells of Oracle text that you talk about. When you double-click the file, Excel uses the Workbooks.Open method instead. This opens the file as it should be opened and preserves the multiple-line formatting. Just invoke the Workbooks.Open method and tell VBA it's tab-delimited and you are good to go. I am not sure if this is just a 2010 thing, or if it will work with older Excel versions, but it works fine for me.

I have found a problem, but it isn't a deal breaker. Going over the sets with multiple arts per card, I found that the flavor texts under the additional card information are not correct. For example, the flavor text for all 4 copies of Armor Thrull from Fallen Empires is the same as the first card. I am not sure if you were aware of this and it's a problem with interfacing with Gatherer, or just a quirk of the program, but I thought you might like to know. It's not a deal breaker for me since I don't really use the flavor texts at the moment, but someone else might.

[Ark]

Wizards usually announces the set code at some point before the set comes out. You can also get it by seeing the URL they use for the set icons, like: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Im ... l&rarity=R
The set=SOM part means SOM is the set code they use.

I can't control how users open the CSV files in Excel, which is why I give the explanation. Most users aren't going to be using VBA to open the file either. Good to know for people who use VBA though. Really makes me think of Excel as a piece of crap though, if they can't get basic simple formats like CSV to open right. It's not a complex spec. I hate having to lie and create what is really a TSV file with a *.csv file extension just to make it work with Excel, but clearly many users would want to import data to Excel, so I have to give that choice.

I'll check into the Flavor text thing and get back with you shortly.

[manaman22]

Thanks for looking into the flavor text thing and the set codes. I also didn't expect such a quick reply.

For me, the whole point of getting a list was to update my own collection management software with current Oracle wordings. I have used Excel for that for quite some time, so it seemed natural to use VBA. I just wanted a script I could run a couple of times a year to take care of the changes for me so I don't have to do it by hand every time they print a set or issue errata.

Excel works. I have never said it works particularly well and trying to code for it can be an exercise in patience to say the least. It is a bit overblown as well. Eventually though, I can get a passable solution for what I need done the way I want it. Works well enough for me.

It is a shame that you have to jump through so many hoops to get a workable option for most people. I appreciate you taking your time to do this when there is little incentive otherwise. I don't mind providing help (for VBA at least) and feedback either.

[Ark]

Pages like http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/A ... arcana/507 is where Wizards put the code long before the set comes out.

I checked the code and it is currently by-design that the flavor text is the same for each alt art.
Everything that is under "Additional Card Information" will be like this, because it is only fetched once, and the page that is fetched also contains the list of alt art IDs.

By definition, this is ok for Printed Name, Printed Type, Printed Rules, and Card #. But Flavor Text and Artist can actually vary, and the program will not pick this up currently.

I can write an additional method to loop back and gather the info for each card alt ID individually, which will result in more hits to gatherer, and thus more time to finish the entire download. For modern sets, this is negligible, as it only effects main set basic land. For older sets, this will make it much slower, but if you have the option checked to get the additional information, I guess you should be prepared for a long download already.

Luckily, no other column of information can possibly, by definition of M:TG cards, ever differ for alt versions of the same card, so for "faster" downloads without that extra option checked, there will be no difference at all.

[manaman22]

Ark,

Thanks again for looking into this. I missed problems with the artist information for the multi-art cards. Since that is the case, I would appreciate if you would add in some code to include the correct artists and I guess while you are there, the correct flavor text. I collect artist and world sets, so being able to generate correct lists of cards by artist to tell if I have all the cards would be nice. This is especially true given that Quinton Hoover is one artist I am rather fond of and he has several cards amongst the multi-art cards that I would prefer not to miss (I see you Hymn to Tourach).

I would appreciate it if you did implement this change, but it does not need to be right now. I am not in a hurry for it. Since I set the downloader to do pretty much all the cards at once, I tend to take a "set it and forget it" approach to the download and don't worry about the time it takes. If you want to wait to implement this later as an update with other features, that would be fine.

Thanks

[Ark]

v1.0.5 - Cards with multiple art will now have unique Flavor Text, Card Number, and Artist information fetched for each version.
Also, I added MBS-Mirrodin Besieged to the default Set List, since it will be out soon. (You have to go to Edit/Edit Set List and click Default then Ok if you want to use the new built-in default list and had v1.0.4 or before installed).

I realized that Card Number can differ for alternate arts such as basic lands, so that is up there with the flavor text and artist information.

[manaman22]

Ark,

Thanks for adding the flavor text and artist update. I will download and take a look. I appreciate your work and thanks for the great program.

[woogerboy21]

Is there a way to define multiple subfolders that would get created during the download of the card images? If so could you give an example of how the set line would be formated? For example say I wanted to download all the card images for revised but I wanted them in a folder structure such as "My Sets\3rd Edition Revised\{card images here}".

Also a feature request might be to be able to define a naming method / scheme for multiple card version names. For example basic lands. If there are 4 lands in a set I would like to set the file naming method to be "Forest1.jpg" OR "Forest 1.jpg" OR "Forest [1].jpg" OR "Forest (1).jpg". Just some way to tell the application how to actually format the name of the multi-card name format.

[Ark]

I'm pretty sure that selecting "Options/Image Subfolders/Use Full Set Name" will do what you want for the folder structure. By default it creates the folders using the set codes, but you want the full set name instead.
As for the "My Sets" part, you can select any folder you want for the base folder it uses.

Does any program have an actual need to have Forest1.jpg named with a space, [], or ()? I've only seen programs that want the number right there with no space.

[woogerboy21]

I'm pretty sure that selecting "Options/Image Subfolders/Use Full Set Name" will do what you want for the folder structure. By default it creates the folders using the set codes, but you want the full set name instead.
As for the "My Sets" part, you can select any folder you want for the base folder it uses.

I was hoping to define a parent folder name and then a subfolder under that. Like in the structure used by the magic album application. The image subfolder names are "Core Sets\3rd Revised Edition\ENG" and then expansions would be "Expansions\Mirrodin\ENG". It would be nice to just define a complete path (including multiple subfolder paths) and have the images for that set downloaded to that path.

Does any program have an actual need to have Forest1.jpg named with a space, [], or ()? I've only seen programs that want the number right there with no space.

Once again Magic Album uses the format "{cardname} [1]" as a file name (example "Forest [1].jpg" OR "Swamp [1]" [theres's a space between the name and the bracketed card number]). I was just hoping for some method to specify naming formats so you dont have to have to constantly go back to static entries if users decide to use some other naming method.

[Ark]

I'm pretty sure that selecting "Options/Image Subfolders/Use Full Set Name" will do what you want for the folder structure. By default it creates the folders using the set codes, but you want the full set name instead.
As for the "My Sets" part, you can select any folder you want for the base folder it uses.

I was hoping to define a parent folder name and then a subfolder under that. Like in the structure used by the magic album application. The image subfolder names are "Core Sets\3rd Revised Edition\ENG" and then expansions would be "Expansions\Mirrodin\ENG". It would be nice to just define a complete path (including multiple subfolder paths) and have the images for that set downloaded to that path.

Does any program have an actual need to have Forest1.jpg named with a space, [], or ()? I've only seen programs that want the number right there with no space.

Once again Magic Album uses the format "{cardname} [1]" as a file name (example "Forest [1].jpg" OR "Swamp [1]" [theres's a space between the name and the bracketed card number]). I was just hoping for some method to specify naming formats so you dont have to have to constantly go back to static entries if users decide to use some other naming method.

I'll see what I can do. What other types of sets can there be other than "Core Sets" and "Expansions" ? Are oddball sets like Vs and Relics in Expansions too?

And can you get me a list of all the types of folder names it uses for the language? If I put a {language} type variable in a user-defined path string, it would expand to either "en" or "en_us" because those are standard language kinds of strings you see all over the place. I don't know what types of letters it would use for 3 letter versions.

[woogerboy21]

The lang. with 3 letter abbreviation are as follows for the magic album application:
Abbr Name Native
ENG English English
RUS Russian Русский
GER German Deutsche
FRA French Français
ITA Italian Italiano
POR Portuguese Português
SPA Spanish Español
JPN Japanese 日本語
ZHC Simplified Chinese # 中国话,汉语;中文
ZHT Traditional Chinese # 中國話,漢語;中文
KOR Korean 한국말
HEB Hebrew עִבְרִית
ARA Arabic العربية
LAT Latin Latīna
SAN Sanskrit संस्कृता वाक्
GRC Ancient Greek Ἑλληνική

How ever I would rather see the application handle subfolders defined in there path than static entries for folder names or languages. This way users can simply define the paths they want and no future updates are required in the event a newer application is release that uses some new type of folder structure.

[Ark]

If I redo the path/file structure option so it is a free entry text box, then I'd likely want to offer a {lang} kind of thing so that if you pick a different language from the menu, you can automatically have the other language images go to the proper folder. Of course, I'd probably want to offer {lang} for ISO 639-1 and {lang3} for ISO 639-2 (the one you'd want here probably).

I still need to know what the point of this "Core Sets" vs "Expansions" thing is, and if there is a 3rd or more choice that could appear there.

This way, you could just enter:
{settype}\{setname}\{lang3}
into the box for the path structure.