> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Markevich [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 8:50 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Retrieving the first set of pages
>
>
> Maybe I'm a bit thicker than I should be... but I can't get
> Plucker to do
> anything. I followed the step by step startup for Windows (not my
> preferred platform, but anyways)... and it doesn't seem to fetch
> anything from the Internet. This is a fresh install, and it
> always says
> "0 collected, 0 still to do" even though I have never synced with it
> before.
There's no catch; the dox just aren't that great is all. Here's all you need to do:
1: Launch "Plucker Help" from the Start/Plucker menu.
2: Click on the "Setup Default Database" button which will launch a notepad window with your plucker.ini (.cfg?) file.
3: After "user =" put your HotySync ID. YOU MUST DO THIS OR YOU WILL NOT TRANSFER YOUR PLUCKER.pdb FILES TO YOUR PALM!
4: OPTIONAL: edit the "doc_name =" and "doc_file =" and "category =" lines as you see fit
5: Edit the "home url =" line with the web page you want to pluck.
6: OPTIONAL: edit the "home_maxdepth =" line to reasonable value (2-4?) so that you do not pluck "forever" chasing a virtually infinite tree of links.
7: Save the file
8: Click the "Build Default DB" button inside Plucker help.
9: Wait for it to finish and HotSync
Once you get that working, you will probably want to automate some of this stuff and add more pages.
To add a new database (document, page-to-be-plucked, whatever you want to call it), Select "Add a New Database" from the Start/Plucker menu. Give it a name. Repeat for as many as you need. This creates a directory with the name you entered under C:/Program Files/Plucker with its own "plucker.ini" file which should be modified as indicated in the previous steps.
Now create a batch file with a line like this for each database (document, whatever) you created:
runsync <database_name>
Now use your OS scheduler to run that batch file periodically. DONE! BTW, if you are going to be doing the batch file thing, you want to edit the "close_on_exit =" line and set it to "TRUE" in the plucker.ini file; that way when the "runsync" command finishes, its window will automatically be closed.
This is probably the way 95% of users will want to use plucker but the doc writer/s simply do not do a good job of anticipating likely useage and presenting the material with that in mind. The info is all in there but it took me 2 weeks of playing around to get it all figured out. If you want to get even fancier (you will), the only other thing you might want to do is create an "exclusionlist.txt" file inside your C:/Program Files/Plucker/<database_name> directory. The dox are pretty good at describing the format/syntax of the file but didn't clearly explain that the ONLY way to make it work is to use THAT EXACT FILENAME in THAT EXACT DIRECTORY.
You are now a power plucker user. You're welcome!
