PDFs / book data in text format

[Matijs van Zuijlen]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 06:51:33AM -0500, Franz Albright wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I have subscribed to these boards for a long time, but I don't belive
> that I have ever written anything.  I have a few problems that I am
> hoping someone on this board can help with.
>
> My brother is working in France, and has a lot of free time, so I
> suggested that he build a Java Swing-based character generator.  He
> agreed and has already started building some core objects, but he has
> two problems.  The first is that he does not has access to the books,
> and the second is that he will need a lot of the material from the
> books in some format that he can work with (text or xml).

This is very nice: Someone actually has time to do a new character
generator. Will its source code be available? I may want to port it to
perl or C++, with a Gtk+ interface, or just see how he solves certain
problems, for use in my own very-long-term over-engineered character
generator project.

> I remember some time ago there was a lot of discussion on the boards
> about somebody having the books in PDF format.  I was wondering how
> big the PDFs are, and also if it would be possible to get a copy of
> them?  If it is not, I can probably send him a scanned copy of the
> books, but I still don't know what to do about getting the data into a
> manageable format (other than typing it - yuck).  Does anyone have
> material from the character book (and the combat/magic book if
> possible) in some manageable format?

The pdf files are about 400K each. You can download them from
http://abroere.xs4all.nl/pnp/rules.htm#General
Books one and two are nearly finished (there might be some typos), the
other two are in a very early stage. The pdf files are generated from
xml, which I can send you (again, about 400K per book), and there even
is a rudimentary HTML generation (all books in one file, 700K), so I could
send that, too. Currently, there is no plain-text output, but there are
plenty of programs to convert HTML to text (I just tried one, looks
good). Take your pick. The XML and HTML files would be smaller if
compressed, of course. Oh, and be sure to read the description of the
various versions on, e.g., http://abroere.xs4all.nl/pnp/book1.htm, and
decide which one you want.

Oh, and please turn on line wrapping in your e-mail program.

--
Matijs van Zuijlen

    ... designed to fill holes or cracks of not more than two cubic vims.
                            -- Robert Sheckley, Untouched by Human Hands