A few Forum helper tools

[v_kyr]

The "Forum helper tools" is a collection of little Python scripts for different tasks, which maybe useful here for the one or other forum user.

-------------------- affwebservice --------------------

Let's start with a little script I've called affwebservice.py which can open some of the common Affinity WebServices, like this Forum, the Affinity Online Help system, or Affinity YouTube channel etc. inside your web browser.

   

Usage & Download:

> python3 affwebservice.py

• affwebservice.py

 

------------------ screenshot ----------------------

Next here's a little script for making screenshots of your desktop monitors, as default it takes a screenshot from over all your connected monitors, but you can also explicitely select from which monitor (supports 3 monitors so far) to take a screenshot from. A taken screenshot will be placed in your users home directory with a filename of "~/screenshot.png". If there's already a previous screencapture file, that one will be renamed to "~/screenshot.png.old".

I've called this one simply screenshot.py, NOTE that this script makes use of the python "mss" module, which you have to install into your python distro in order to make use of it.

 

Usage & Download:

> pip install mss
> python3 screenshot.py

• screenshot.py

 

------------------ shortlink & expandlink ----------------------

Next we have shortlink.py and it's counterpart expandlink.py, which can be used to generate and/or expand TinyUrl links for usage in the forum here.

 

Usage & Download:

> pip install pyshorteners
> python3 shortlink.py
> python3 expandlink.py

• shortlink.py
• expandlink.py

 

------------------ wiki - wikipedia ----------------------

Next we have wiki.py which can be used to search for some explanations on wikipedia.

Usage & Download:

> pip install wikipedia
> python3 wiki.py

• wiki.py

 

------------------ spell checker ----------------------

Then we have spell.py a very simple spell checker for correcting maybe wrong written (spelled) words.

Usage & Download:

> pip install textblob
> python3 spell.py

• spell.py

 

-------------------- translator ----------------------

Next there is translator.py which uses the Google Translate engine for performing language translations.

Usage & Download:

> pip install textblob
> pip install googletrans
> python3 spell.py

• translator.py

 

------------------ TO BE CONTINUED ----------------------

[v_kyr]

-------------------- Affinity Forum Search -------- updated ------------

The affinity-forum-search.py Python script is a little help tool, for searching over the Affinity Forum here for/after specific threads, by applying some search terms related to some theme. It uses the Google search engine in order to find matching terms and the search query is explicitely restricted to the contents of the forum site here! - Any of the found and listed response URL entries inside the response list can be selected and then opened in your default systems webbrowser.

 

Here's a short common usage screencast ...

Python3 module dependencies install:

> pip install googlesearch-python

Script Usage & Download:

> python3 affinity-forum-search.py

• affinity-forum-search.py     ***Updated!***

 

[VectorVonDoom]

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fforum.affinity.serif.com%2F+%s

For the search you could just set up a custom search engine instead. Think it would be the above although I’d swap google.com for startpage.com for privacy reasons. Not certain it’s better than searching directly from here though.

If you want to be a bit fancier for no good reason you could create a javascript bookmarklet to prompt for the search term and search for it.

You can also use bookmarklets for translation and url shortener, not sure why you’d want spell check as it’s built in to everything. I’m on my ipad at the minute or would do the code but it’s not hard to find. So no real need to do it in python especially if you don’t already have it installed. But it’s good practice!

 

 

 

[v_kyr]

52 minutes ago, VectorVonDoom said:

For the search you could just set up a custom search engine instead. Think it would be the above although I’d swap google.com for startpage.com for privacy reasons. ...

The Python script already does all that (look into it's code), it reuses directly a Google search API (as an imported module in Py) and the Affinity site is already setup and part of it's search query ...

Quote

def gsearch():
    forum_site = " site:forum.affinity.serif.com"
    query = my_entry.get() + forum_site
    ...

Further this way one doesn't need to acknowledge cookies, get's unwanted adverts and the like in response. All in all it keeps more privacy in contrast to using a webbrowser directly, since only the response URLs of the Affinity site are returned and opened on user demand then directly in a webbrowser here.

1 hour ago, VectorVonDoom said:

You can also use bookmarklets for translation and url shortener ...

One probably don't want to always go to all such webservices via a webbrowser, having always first to acknowledge cookies first, leaving a bunch of cookies and other user location data etc. The scripting way here accesses all those things directly without the need of doing it via a webbrowser.

1 hour ago, VectorVonDoom said:

... not sure why you’d want spell check as it’s built in to everything.

It's maybe useful to check totally locally first if something is spelled and written correctly, before answering to some thread posting or the like.

Also for those who may have Python already in use, they can do all that common stuff here via some simple scripts, which they also can easily customize/modify to their individual needs. Beside the fact that they may also learn something about scripting, in case Affinity might one day support scripting too.

[VectorVonDoom]

8 hours ago, v_kyr said:

The Python script already does all that (look into it's code), it reuses directly a Google search API (as an imported module in Py) and the Affinity site is already setup and part of it's search query ...

Further this way one doesn't need to acknowledge cookies, get's unwanted adverts and the like in response. All in all it keeps more privacy in contrast to using a webbrowser directly, since only the response URLs of the Affinity site are returned and opened on user demand then directly in a webbrowser here.

One probably don't want to always go to all such webservices via a webbrowser, having always first to acknowledge cookies first, leaving a bunch of cookies and other user location data etc. The scripting way here accesses all those things directly without the need of doing it via a webbrowser.

It's maybe useful to check totally locally first if something is spelled and written correctly, before answering to some thread posting or the like.

Also for those who may have Python already in use, they can do all that common stuff here via some simple scripts, which they also can easily customize/modify to their individual needs. Beside the fact that they may also learn something about scripting, in case Affinity might one day support scripting too.

I know it already does that, just saying you don’t need to unless you really want to. There are easier ways that your browser can already do those things and so you don’t need to install python, extra libraries and run external apps to do it. Yes the python script blocks ads etc but who doesn’t run an adblocker these days, in my opinion the web is barely usable without one.  Also as I said I would use a privacy respecting search engine and not google so you don’t care about cookies. Still don’t understand the need for a spell checking utility, browsers check spelling as you type or once you paste text but it’s obviously useful to you.

Anyway some may find them useful and prefer to do it the python way but, even though I’ve python installed, I’d do it the easy way.

[v_kyr]

1 minute ago, VectorVonDoom said:

...There are easier ways that your browser can already do those things and so you don’t need to install python, extra libraries and run external apps to do it....

As always many ways lead to Rome!

Though webbrowsers for me are one of the biggest memory guzzlers during runtime. Also for example Chrome when started accesses and tries to connect first to some ~10 ports (aquiring services and fetching/transfering my system & user datas). Other browser engine based services, like the Electron based MS VSCode aren't any better here in this regard ...

Also most malware and unwanted spam you get these days entirely stems from leaving overall too many footprints mainly by webbrowser usage and it's related services (also when using a bunch of webbrowser plugins/enhancements and the like). Further my FF bookmarks file is >30 MB (has some ~1000 entries) and finding something relevant stored inside once (even it's overall good structured), gets more and more difficult. Thus I also have to use seperate tools like Dash, Snippets managers, SQLight DBs and the like.

In contrast to the above said (webbrowsers are huge main memory wasters), Python scripting does just occupy some more additional place on my local hardware, which is overall lesser than the webbrowser caches. When I run some Python scripts they occupy during runtime a little bit of the main memory, which is afterwards immediately freed and again available. Webbrowsers don't free their occupied memory immediately and also the cache file those created and use grows and grows.

Further (and beside the by MacOS bundled old Python version here) many apps/tools I use already do come with an Python interpreter along, as it's those tools main embedded scripting languange and the way to enhance & customize those tools (like "Sublime Text", "Inkscape" ... etc.) then. Also instead of using a bunch of seperate Unix CLI tools like "perl", "awk", "sed" ... I can do all what those offer, but even better and easier, with a few lines of Python scripting, beside other DevOPs tasks. So all things I can't and never would do via webbrowsers! - For me it's an ideal tool for RAD and quick prototyping stuff, performing OS system related things etc.

Finally one don't have to use Python scripting, everybody is free to use what pleases them personally more here. So if others and you are more used to do all those things inside a webbrowser, then do it that way. Nobody is forced to do it with (or use) Python here!

 

[thomaso]

I am not used to Python yet and get an error message which I can't solve:

$ python3 affinity-forum-search.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "affinity-forum-search.py", line 14, in <module>
    from googlesearch import search
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'googlesearch'

I just have updated to Python 3.11.2 from https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3112/
Before I had Python 2 installed which caused a similar error but for "tkinter" and "line 12".

Any hints to fix this?

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Any hints to fix this?

Don't you never look what is shown above the download file as an usage?

> pip install googlesearch-python ...or even better...  > pip3 install googlesearch-python ...in order to make clear that Python 3 should be used!
... then afterwards ...
> python3 affinity-forum-search.py

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Before I had Python 2 installed which caused a similar error but for "tkinter" and "line 12".

I've always clearly name Python 3 to use for mostly ALL scripts I publish here in the forum (see also the thread's TAGS, which indicates that too), Python 2 is too old and was already outdated years before (...even Apple ommits to bundle it nowadays in their more actual MacOS versions, see therefor: Apple stops bundling Python with macOS). - Also I always indicate if some third party Python 3 module has to be installed and is needed (used/imported) by the scripts, aka ...

• > pip install whatever-module<

                ... or ...

• > pip3 install whatever-module

[thomaso]

41 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Don't you never look what is shown above the download file as an usage?

Thank's, this solved it. – Yes, I did read those bold lines before but did not realise these were commands which I need to use myself (not just the script) – although you literally wrote "usage" (not "installation") it maybe unclear for those who aren't used to use Python or any script within their Terminal.app.

I guess I still don't handle it correctly. I got a result only twice, since then any later search causes an error like "HTTPError: 429 Client Error: Too Many Requests for url: https://www.google.com/sorry/index?" … while a browser search does work without issue or delay.

[v_kyr]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

... although you literally wrote "usage" (not "installation")

The shown command already shows an "> pip install modulname", so the steps first install that module, then call/execute the script! - I don't have the time to write every little thing explicitely down here, instead I therefore expect that the people who want to realy use it, will then deal themselves with the common Python calls, its module system, the language in general etc. (... as they have with Affinity products here too for their overall usage).

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

I guess I still don't handle it correctly.

Yes, it's a wrong input!

Note that whatever you type in, in that search text field as text characters, will internally already be quotes to form a search string. For example in Python language ...

• my_string = "This is a string"    ### here the variable my_string get's dynamically a string var, since it get's the text "This is a string" (see the double quotes) assigned
• my_string = 'This is a string'     ### this is an alternative string assignment where the string is in single quotes.

... the script internally uses the input/contents of the search text field as a string variable and thus so get's in your case --> ""Don't you never look"" ...

Try to use instead single quotes, or leave them completely out ...

 

[v_kyr]

@thomaso Another reason for why it won't work here then is, while after some more usage Google then blocks the access to their search engine and it's API.

I now can see this here whereever using Google search, no matter if from the Python script or via a Webbrowser ...

 

[thomaso]

11 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

I now can see this here whereever using Google search, no matter if from the Python script or via a Webbrowser ...

I've never seen a message like "Too Many Requests for Google" before, and also not the one in your screenshot. Different to your experience I was able to do a search in a webbrowser with several trials successfully … while the Python search caused the error consequently.

[v_kyr]

25 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I've never seen a message like "Too Many Requests for Google" before, and also not the one in your screenshot. ...

If you use it a lot you will see it sooner or later too, as they track the IP address for the request. - First they will give that in return for the API access requests, which in turn for the Python script will then give those "HTTPError: 429 Client Error: Too Many Requests for url: ..." messages. Next you will then see that also for Webbrowser based Google search accesses (from the same IP address) the following will be shown in return, where you have to acknowledge first to be a human and no robot  ... 😀

 

 

 

[thomaso]

12 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

If you use it a lot you will see it sooner or later too, as they track the IP address for the request. - First they will give that in return for the API access requests,

I understood that from your screenshot already, that made me mention that I never experienced before such a message, neither for a G-search nor for G-Translate, even if I used them intensively. Maybe it matters that I switched about 2-3 years ago to DuckDuckGo + DeepL, and meanwhile use G. selectively only.

16 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

which in turn for the Python script will then give those "HTTPError: 429 Client Error: Too Many Requests for url: ..." messages

Is is possible that a Python search starts an additional, separate task if I click on "Search" once more when a search doesn't show a result (= is not finished?) and thus feels for that URL like "Too Many Requests" ? (sorry, I don't know the terminal command to leave/end/quit/exit a running Python search to get back to the default "username$" – maybe this influences this, too.)

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Is is possible that a Python search starts an additional, separate task if I click on "Search" once more when a search doesn't show a result (= is not finished?) and thus feels for that URL like "Too Many Requests" ?

It's possible that the installed & imported googlesearch-python modul, which does all the request calling against the Google serach API and then fetches the responses, has some strange or buggy behavior here. Have to check at Github if there are such known issues with that module.

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

(sorry, I don't know the terminal command to leave/end/quit/exit a running Python search to get back to the default "username$" – maybe this influences this, too.)

When you started it via the Python3 call from a terminal (Terminal.app, iTerm etc.), then typing in a "Ctrl-c" will kill and exit the running python process, so you are again at your command prompt inside the terminal afterwards. So ...

> python3 affinity-forum-search.py
   ...
  Ctrl-c
> |

[v_kyr]

-------------------- Generating a QR-Code as SVG --------------------

This little qrcode_to_svg.py Python3 script will generate/create a SVG QR-Code from some given text and save it as 'qrcode.svg' at the directory location the script is executed from! - There are three SVG factory generation methods availble to choose from (basic, fragment, path), where basic and fragment do generate the QR-Code out of many rectangles (fragment is more compact here) and path is the common curves and the most compact way.

Python3 module dependencies install:

> pip install qrcode
> pip install lxml

Script Usage & Download:
> python3 qrcode_to_svg.py

• qrcode_to_svg.py

 

[laurent32]

On 3/20/2023 at 12:52 AM, v_kyr said:

The affinity-forum-search.py Python script is a little help tool, for searching over the Affinity Forum here for/after specific threads, by applying some search terms related to some theme.

Hi @v_kyr, wouldn't it be nice to have the option to copy the found list ?

[v_kyr]

2 hours ago, laurent32 said:

...wouldn't it be nice to have the option to copy the found list ?

If needed this can easily be done, just add another "Copy All" button with a corresponding associated "def copy_all: ..." function, which fetches the whole list contents and copies it to the clipboard. - It's just adding a few lines of py code ...

... the list contents will usually be copied as a bunch of tuple entries "{https://...}{https://...} ..." over into the clipboard. - But we can first (...before sending them to the clipboard) iterate through them and convert those tuples to plain strings. So we would get something from the clipboard back as text like ...

Quote

...
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/183996-tablet-recommendations-for-affinity-photo-please/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/120009-drawing-tablet-recommendation/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/31072-tablet-recommendation-for-novice/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/117687-mac-air-compatible-tablet-recommendation/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/96655-asking-for-tablet-recommendation-for-affinity-designerphoto/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/121250-affinity-design-tablet-recommendations/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/60865-which-graphic-tablet-are-you-using/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/31374-affinity-photo-graphic-tablet/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/96655-asking-for-tablet-recommendation-for-affinity-designerphoto/page/2/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/31072-tablet-recommendation-for-novice/page/2/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/164690-how-to-recover-corrupt-afpub-file/
...

See the above script update!

[v_kyr]

------------------ Password generator ----------------------

This little pwdgen.py Python3 script will generate a strong password for a given character length. The generated password can afterwards be copied to the clipboard for reusage.

  

Python3 Script Usage & Download:
> python3 pwdgen.py

• pwdgen.py

[Ezbaze]

To anyone thinking of runing any of the code, please be carefull when runing any kind of code from the internet.

 

The "affinity-forum-search.py" is a google scraper, which is against Googles TOS...

[v_kyr]

9 hours ago, Ezbaze said:

To anyone thinking of runing any of the code, please be carefull when runing any kind of code from the internet.

 

The "affinity-forum-search.py" is a google scraper, which is against Googles TOS...

Yes, it seams so! - However I've an alternative slightly enhanced version which searches instead against DuckDuckGo.

[Ezbaze]

8 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Yes, it seams so! - However I've an alternative slightly enhanced version which searches instead against DuckDuckGo.

That is also against DuckDuckGos TOS

[v_kyr]

2 hours ago, Ezbaze said:

That is also against DuckDuckGos TOS

This was a personal project, as I once tested the capabilities of several providers search APIs for some third party customers (... for a possible authorized & lisenzed integration as a search facility into huge commercial systems and the like).  So I have once also (among others) checked that DuckDuckGo based search API for testing purposes. - But I won't share that either way publicly anymore here.

For example, a DDG based test integration result -generated via my own UI app code generator for Py-, thus looks UI-tool wise pretty similar to the one shown above for the Google search API, or as one for test searching against Bing. Therefor I had also some versions with all relavant search APIs intergrated, so the vendor API to search against was there instead choosable and the whole also wrote out some report statistics in order to compare returned results.

In terms of quality of results (for my tests) the Google & DDG search facilities offered slightly better and more exact search results than Bing here, dependent on the given/applied search terms. - Though this might also again change in future here, as more and more AI features are incorporated into the vendors search facilities. So one has to recheck this again from time to time, for possible changes of vendor search engines and their given results, as things might change over time.

[v_kyr]

The Siri way, or playing around with speech recognition- and output can be sometimes fun. Some time ago I've played a little bit around with Python scripting in this regard, in order to build a personal customized J.A.R.V.I.S like managing app, which can recognize spoken commands and then takes the associated actions for those.

Here are some quick typical example runs ...

 

 

Over time I've added additionally, more personal used command recognitions, so beside opening & closing certain apps (like the Affinity apps) I can also open and login to the forum here via speech commands, etc. - However, so far all this has nothing to do with AI here, as the whole only follows a presketched programmed flow!

[Cupara]

On 5/20/2023 at 6:53 AM, v_kyr said:

This was a personal project, as I once tested the capabilities of several providers search APIs for some third party customers (... for a possible authorized & lisenzed integration as a search facility into huge commercial systems and the like).  So I have once also (among others) checked that DuckDuckGo based search API for testing purposes. - But I won't share that either way publicly anymore here.

For example, a DDG based test integration result -generated via my own UI app code generator for Py-, thus looks UI-tool wise pretty similar to the one shown above for the Google search API, or as one for test searching against Bing. Therefor I had also some versions with all relavant search APIs intergrated, so the vendor API to search against was there instead choosable and the whole also wrote out some report statistics in order to compare returned results.

In terms of quality of results (for my tests) the Google & DDG search facilities offered slightly better and more exact search results than Bing here, dependent on the given/applied search terms. - Though this might also again change in future here, as more and more AI features are incorporated into the vendors search facilities. So one has to recheck this again from time to time, for possible changes of vendor search engines and their given results, as things might change over time.

 

On 8/18/2023 at 7:16 AM, v_kyr said:

The Siri way, or playing around with speech recognition- and output can be sometimes fun. Some time ago I've played a little bit around with Python scripting in this regard, in order to build a personal customized J.A.R.V.I.S like managing app, which can recognize spoken commands and then takes the associated actions for those.

Here are some quick typical example runs ...

 

 

Over time I've added additionally, more personal used command recognitions, so beside opening & closing certain apps (like the Affinity apps) I can also open and login to the forum here via speech commands, etc. - However, so far all this has nothing to do with AI here, as the whole only follows a presketched programmed flow!

I wouldn't mind having the Python files and any necessary installs I need to do to play around with these and create something for my personal PC as these would come in handy especially if I could program the JARVIS one to recognize when I say "Hello, Jarvis" and it responds with a hello then begins listing off the days tasks and reminders.