Absolute beginner - is this feasible?

[lcazarre]

I am by no means a serious programmer (which will become evident as you
read this very message), except that I use VBA almost daily to automate
Excel spreadsheets.

I do enjoy programming however and the only thing that prevented me
from learning a language other than VBA is the lack of a project. Until
today, I was not sure what I would do if I knew how to program in a
language such as Python.

I now feel the need to develop a small program for myself. I have a
free subscription to Factiva (www.factiva.com), which gives me online
access to virtually all newspapers, magazines, etc. using a normal
internet browser.

The bad thing is that I can only access the articles one by one. I wish
I could write a program that would:
- prompt me to choose a publication (let's say The Economist),
- find the latest publication,
- download automatically all the articles in that edition and finally
- combine and format the articles in a single Word document.

This way, I will be able to print the magazine and read it on my way to
the office.

Now my questions:
- is it legal? (I do have a subscription to Factiva. I do not intend to
distribute the printouts)
- If so, can I use Python to automate this task?

Thank you.

 

[Sybren Stuvel]

(e-mail address removed) enlightened us with:

- is it legal? (I do have a subscription to Factiva. I do not intend
to distribute the printouts)

Depends on their legal terms. Maybe you should ask them?

- If so, can I use Python to automate this task?

Of course!

Sybren

 

[Michiel Sikma]

Op 10-aug-2006, om 14:45 heeft (e-mail address removed) het volgende
geschreven:

Now my questions:
- is it legal? (I do have a subscription to Factiva. I do not
intend to
distribute the printouts)
- If so, can I use Python to automate this task?

Thank you.

I do believe that personal non-commercial usage of such articles is
legal. It's legal to rip CDs for private non-commercial purposes due
to the AHRA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act),
so perhaps it's the same for text.

You can indeed automate this task, but I don't know if writing to a
Word file is possible. It's a proprietary format, afterall. Making
PDFs should be a breeze, however.

Michiel

 

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

I am by no means a serious programmer (which will become evident as you
read this very message), except that I use VBA almost daily to automate
Excel spreadsheets.

I do enjoy programming however and the only thing that prevented me
from learning a language other than VBA is the lack of a project. Until
today, I was not sure what I would do if I knew how to program in a
language such as Python.

I now feel the need to develop a small program for myself. I have a
free subscription to Factiva (www.factiva.com), which gives me online
access to virtually all newspapers, magazines, etc. using a normal
internet browser.

The bad thing is that I can only access the articles one by one. I wish
I could write a program that would:
- prompt me to choose a publication (let's say The Economist),
- find the latest publication,
- download automatically all the articles in that edition and finally
- combine and format the articles in a single Word document.

This way, I will be able to print the magazine and read it on my way to
the office.

Now my questions:
- is it legal? (I do have a subscription to Factiva. I do not intend to
distribute the printouts)

For the legal part, you're on the wrong newsgroup.

- If so, can I use Python to automate this task?

Should be mostly feasible. I can't tell for the conversion to Word (but
is this necessary ?), but I don't see major difficulty for the other
parts. FWIW, I'd start with the 2nd and 3rd points - and I'd eventually
try and find out if these documents are accessible thru RSS feeds first,
which would greatly simplifie the task.

NB : urllib (in the standard lib) and other 3rd part packages like
BeautifulSoup (html parser) or some rss reader may help.

Thank you.

HTH

 

[lcazarre]

You can indeed automate this task, but I don't know if writing to a

Word file is possible.

Thanks to you all. I mentioned Word as example. Actually, any format
would do, as long as I can print them (pdf, txt,etc.).

Now I just have to learn Python!

LC

 

[BartlebyScrivener]

I don't know if writing to a
Word file is possible. It's a proprietary format, afterall.

see:

Python To Word

Capture script output in MS Word

http://gflanagan.net/site/dotnet/05/RunPythonScriptFromWord.html

rd