Parsing log files or OCR

[AnonAimos]

I'm working on updating a script that was dumb (i.e. just clicked at specific spots on the screen at specific times) to actually monitor and respond to what's actually occurring. I've got plenty of things using imagesearch working, and I think I'm getting the hang of pixelsearch. These are great if I know -exactly- where and what's going to be somewhere.

But what if I know the format something will be in, but not specific contents and I want to react based on that information. i.e. an auction is ending in 2h42m and I would like to Call("SetEvent", 162) (162 being 2h42m in min) or my companion <companion name> returned from mission so I would like to call("DoRun", "companion name")

I know the information I need happens to be written into a logfile, I wouldn't have any concerns with reading the text there, but what what I've read elsewhere autoit itself is not suited for reading log files in real time, even for simple exact matches like a specific character name. (please correct me if I'm wrong, I'd really love to be wrong here, this seems to me by far the simplest)

Another way to go about it might be using character recognition, but I'm having difficultly getting OCR to work with it. Is there anything out there that works with autoit & has something to help with the building of your own character sets for in game fonts. If so, are there also locations which have downloadable font sets for particular games (because a: I'm interested in other games and applications too, I need to be able to use this type of functionality flexibly, and b: If I make a character set for my game actually work I'd like to share it because this process has not been easy for me, so I hope I might be able to make it easier for someone else)

Finally, if none of these work, I've used other parsers which can trigger audio alerts on log files. Is there any easy way to detect that app triggering, determine which trigger it was, and take appropriate action in my autoit script.

[lolkop]

Originally Posted by AnonAimos

I'm working on updating a script that was dumb (i.e. just clicked at specific spots on the screen at specific times) to actually monitor and respond to what's actually occurring. I've got plenty of things using imagesearch working, and I think I'm getting the hang of pixelsearch. These are great if I know -exactly- where and what's going to be somewhere.

But what if I know the format something will be in, but not specific contents and I want to react based on that information. i.e. an auction is ending in 2h42m and I would like to Call("SetEvent", 162) (162 being 2h42m in min) or my companion <companion name> returned from mission so I would like to call("DoRun", "companion name")

I know the information I need happens to be written into a logfile, I wouldn't have any concerns with reading the text there, but what what I've read elsewhere autoit itself is not suited for reading log files in real time, even for simple exact matches like a specific character name. (please correct me if I'm wrong, I'd really love to be wrong here, this seems to me by far the simplest)

Another way to go about it might be using character recognition, but I'm having difficultly getting OCR to work with it. Is there anything out there that works with autoit & has something to help with the building of your own character sets for in game fonts. If so, are there also locations which have downloadable font sets for particular games (because a: I'm interested in other games and applications too, I need to be able to use this type of functionality flexibly, and b: If I make a character set for my game actually work I'd like to share it because this process has not been easy for me, so I hope I might be able to make it easier for someone else)

Finally, if none of these work, I've used other parsers which can trigger audio alerts on log files. Is there any easy way to detect that app triggering, determine which trigger it was, and take appropriate action in my autoit script.

it's pretty hard to get what you actually wanna do...

examples with screenshots might be nice to get a clear understanding of your wishes...