Genshiken 1

NAME

genshiken - The free video downloader/streaming client, that can turn a website of video links into your personal playlist

SYNOPSIS

genshiken [DEBUG] Session=Anime-Type [Options]...

genshiken [-V|--version] [-h|--help|--usage] [-R|--source-comments] [-E|--source-code] [--configure long-opt] [-C|--copyright] [-L|--license] [-W|--warrantry] [-I|--status-report]

genshiken [[-v|--commands] [--verbose [ seconds ]]] < [[-x|--get] [-y|--stream] [-i|--view]] {anime-sub,anime-dub,movie,ova,cartoon} > [-a|--alert] [[-m|--impatient] {0,1,2} ] [-f|--no-update] [--no-sessions] [-p|--no-pager] [--weak-signal|--no-bandwidth] [[--rgb|--colorize] {dark,light} ] [[-s|--start-at] number ] [[-d|--base-dir] dir ]

DESCRIPTION

Genshiken gives the user the ability to access online videos via a bash(1) script. It is currently programmed to search for embedded video links, from third-party websites, that contain episodes of an anime series the user may want to watch.

Most websites, however, usually require the user to install and use nonfree software--like "Flash"-- in order to load their videos. This code restricts the users freedom. It’s one thing for a program to behave unethically, but it’s another thing for it to make your programs behave that way too-- like your browser. Within the HTML tags of your favorite website may be some nonfree code, and a browser that isn’t programmed to know the difference will simply execute this code whether it’s ethical or not. It’s in the very nature of proprietary software to ensure that: How it works remains a secret; and, how it’s used remains restricted.

Genshiken is ethical and has no secrets or restrictions. It will allow you to load online videos-- without nonfree code. This behaviour is preffered on a fully-free operating system. There’s no need for a full fledged browser to accomplish all of this either. Genshiken works on the command-line, and uses low-level utilities often found running on a terminal. If you are running a GNU/Linux operating system, chances are you already have all the software necessary to run genshiken.

BASICS

Main Options (A.K.A. The Session Parameter)
Genshiken operates utilizing the below Main Options. A session file will be created once you are either: Downloading a video; streaming a video; or, playing a video. Once you’ve finished and are prompted to continue or not, genshiken will consider your session to be complete and will remove the associated file. If you ever send genshiken the interrupt signal-- via a C-c entered on the keyboard-- whilst in the middle of a session, genshiken will save your current session so that you can return to it later. Upon saving your session, genshiken will terminate with an exit code of 20 (EARLY TERMINATION).

There is no limit to how many session files you can maintain, and they will be updated automatically whenever a new anime has been detected from the website’s Anime-List, or whenever you download an anime. Only 1 restored session may be active at anytime. The creation of session files is a conveniance, not a requisite. The user may change this default behaviour at anytime with the --no-sessions option.

Last thing-- if you were in the middle of a download when you terminated your get session, then you will be brought back to the exact episode and download position when you restore that session. That means that if the progress bar from wget(1) said it was at 61% when you terminated it, then you will start at 61% when you continue. The same type of behaviour can be expected on other types of sessions.
-x Anime-Type, --get Anime-Type

Download an anime series.

-y Anime-Type, --stream Anime-Type

Watch an online anime series via your media player. NOTE: video cache (if using MPlayer(1), or derivitives) = 32,768 Kib-- video loads at 20% cache fill

-i Anime-Type, --view Anime-Type

Play downloaded anime series via your media player.

Main Option Arguments (A.K.A. The Anime-Type Value)
The above Main Options must be given 1 of 5 different arguments on the command-line. These are the Main Option Arguments. These values tell genshiken what kind of Anime-List to download and use to create it’s menus, or which directory to go to that contains your downloaded anime.

BREAKING OPTIONS

As soon as any of the below options are found on the command-line, they are executed and are either: printed to standard output; or, piped to a pager. Genshiken will then terminate upon completion, and all other options are ignored.
-V, --version

Print genshiken’s version number and legal information to standard output.

-h, --help, --usage

Print a basic usage summary to standard output.

-R, --source-comments

Send an outline of genshiken’s source code comments to less(1); if on a dumb terminal, then it will be printed to standard output.

-E, --source-code

Send an outline of genshiken’s source code to less(1); if on a dumb terminal, then it will be printed to standard output.

--configure long-opt

Add a genshiken long option to a configuration file. That option will henceforth be considered to be a default argument for genshiken. The string long-opt is any supplementary long option that genshiken will normally accept; no need to worry about adding the argument that normally goes with the option, for genshiken will prompt you after you’ve entered the command. You must specify the option without the double-dash (’--’). Use tab completion to view all possible choices (tab completion is not supported on dumb terminals); as in: genshiken --configure<TAB>. Provide the --configure option the argument remove, to remove the configuration file; a value of remove-long-opt, to remove a long option that exists within genshiken’s config file.

-C, --copyright

Print genshiken’s copyright information to standard output. I’m publishing this script under the GNU General Public License (GPL); thus, making this program free software.

-L, --license

Send the current version of the GPL to less. This option actually connects you directly to the FSF’s website, to their current copy of the GPL; whereupon, a plain text version is dumped and piped to your pager. You may also type the following command for verification on this:

bash -x genshiken --license |& less

-W, --warranty

Print a short notice on the "warranty" to standard output.

-I, --status-report

Print a status report to standard output that shows you: How much anime you have; how much space is taken up by it; how much free space you have left on your hard drive, etc.

SUPPLEMENTARY OPTIONS

Supply any combination of the following [Options] along with the Session parameter, to further tweak Genshiken to do your computing the way you want it to.
-a, --alert

Alert (BEL) on errors and download completions. This option requires your PC Speaker module to be loaded into the kernel, before it can work.

-m {0,1,2}, --impatient {0,1,2}

Tired of waiting at genshiken’s prompts? Tell genshiken just how impatient you are to speed things up. When this option is not used: genshiken slows down during key points of execution to allow you to read the text on your terminal, so that you can follow along. A level of 2-- means you don’t need to slow down to read the text before a pager; 1-- means you don’t need to slow down at all during a genshiken process; and finally, 0-- means you don’t want a cache to be added to a streaming video, for it may take too long to load. A restored session will set this to level 1, if the --impatient option is not used.

-f, --no-update

Tell genshiken not to re-download your requested Anime-List; but instead, to run it’s menu on genshiken’s last downloaded copy. This works as long as you didn’t interrupt genshiken while downloading the specified Anime-List. If you did interrupt genshiken during this process: Don’t use this option, until you have a complete copy of the specified Anime-List.

--no-sessions

If you don’t want to save your place on exit into a session file, or if you don’t want genshiken to prompt you to restore one of your last sessions: Issue this option. If you want to automate genshiken-- Here Document style: This option, plus the --no-pager and --impatient options make a great combo. Genshiken already makes use of some these options to accomplish the same thing, via it’s Restore_ Previous _ Session function.

-p, --no-pager

Provide this option if you want output, that would normally be sent to a pager, to be sent to standard output instead.

--weak-signal, --limited-bandwidth

Provide this option if you are streaming videos, and the network starts timing-out on you. Currently, this option only works with MPlayer and derivitives. Wget is put in charge of managing network time-outs and reconnecting. This is possible due to MPlayer’s network piping ability; thereby, allowing it to receive input from a data stream. If you face a similar issue with a different media player, a different workaround must be made.

--rgb {dark,light}, --colorize {dark,light}

The colors act as syntax highlighting, and can be used to better understand genshiken’s output. Each color has its own meaning: Yellow-- comments or external input/output; Red-- function names; Green-- constant strings; Magenta-- variable strings or keystrokes to enter; Cyan-- Paths/URLs; Blue-- The name of this script or the name of the anime network genshiken is using. Providing light as an argument gives you bright bold colors; whereas, providing dark as an argument gives you dark subtle colors.

-v, --commands

MUST BE USED AS ARGUMENT 1; a [DEBUG] option. Output genshiken’s command expansions to standard output and HOME/.config/genshiken-USER/debug.log.

--verbose=[ seconds ]

MUST BE USED AS ARGUMENT 1; a [DEBUG] option. Behaves the same as the --commands option, except the output is more verbose. Before each command expansion is a debug prompt. The prompt appears as such: (genshiken_ file :LINE__#): FUNCTION_ NAME - [SHELL LEVEL, SUBSHELL #, ERROR CODE]. The more parentheses you see touching the left side of the monitor, the deeper you are into a subshell command list. The prompt may be delayed a certain amount of seconds before each command expansion, via the optional argument seconds which represents a positive value (decimals may also be used). I’ve added a nice hack to control this behaviour during runtime via a file called HOME/.config/sleep.log. See FILES for how to use it.

-s number, --start-at number

That’s right! You don’t have to start at #1. Tell genshiken which video or image number you want to begin with. You may even specify the string ’latest’ as an argument, in order to view the latest episode of an anime series.

-d dir, --base-dir dir

Setup your Genshiken_ Downloads directory in dir instead of HOME/. If the specified directory is on a USB device, this device must already be mounted first; otherwise, genshiken will complain. You must also be the owner of said device. Please Note: If you download an anime using a different directory than the default videos directory in HOME/, then you must set it the same way when you watch that anime with the --view option.

EXAMPLES

These examples represent how you’ll probably start using genshiken on day 1. There’s no need to attempt to use all of genshiken’s options all in one go. Baby steps... Once you learn one command: Try another! Eventually-- you may even want to look at the source code to further tweak it for efficiency, or even to adapt it to work with your favorite websites. Genshiken was written using a shell-scripting language that GNU Bash understands. This design was intentional, to make it so that any user could easily read and modify the source code, without having to learn a high-level programming language.
This command, for instance, will allow you to download anime:

genshiken --get    anime-dub

Whereas this command, will allow you to view what you’ve downloaded:

genshiken --view   anime-dub

Let’s watch episode 5 of an online cartoon show that we’ll select:

genshiken --stream=cartoon --start-at=5

Let’s start a stream session, and restart genshiken every time we
trigger an EARLY TERMINATION code. This command is useful for cycling
through various anime series, until you find the right one:

eval ’genshiken -y anime-dub --no-sessions’; until [[ $? -ne 20 ]]; do eval "$_ --no-update"; done

HERE DOCUMENT EXAMPLES

Yes, genshiken is generic enough to be used in a Here Document. This may be a bit overkill, but these examples exist to show you that it is possible. The easiest way to use this mechanism, is to let genshiken do it for you. That’s actually what the concept of genshiken Sessions is all about.

The following Here Document examples won’t work if you have a session file saved that is the same session type as the Session parameter that you are currently using. When this happens, genshiken will prompt you if you want to restore a session or not. This extra prompt will make you’re Here Document inaccurate, for it will now require an extra newline character. To prevent this from happening: Use the --no-sessions option where neccessary.

Please Note: Your Here Document can’t be saved by genshiken. It’s redirection is only seen by bash(1). If you have a Here Document that you use frequently with genshiken, then try saving it as a bash script for later execution.
Let’s download the 3rd subtitled anime, from the 6th series onto a USB:

genshiken --get=anime-sub -m2 -p --base-dir=/mnt/my_usb <<GET

yes
6
3
D
Q
GET

Let’s start a random movie marathon-- in color mode:

for A in {1..10}
do genshiken --stream movie -m2 -p --colorize light <<STREAM

  yes
  $A
  $A
  S
  Q
  STREAM
done

Download a set of special episodes, and then view them upon completion:

genshiken -x ova && genshiken -i ova -m2 -p <<PLAY
$(
  ls -l ~/*/*/ova/?    | grep ’^d’                |
  grep -n ’.*’         | grep "[ ]$(date +%b)[ ]" |
  sort -k 7,7n -k 8,8n | sed -n ’$ p’             |
  gawk -F: ’{ print $1 }’
 )
PLAY

FILES

HOME/.config/genshiken-USER/debug.log

This file will store command expansions from a debugging session with genshiken.

HOME/.config/genshiken-USER/missing_ files .log

This file will store which anime’s could not be accessed during your session.

HOME/.config/genshiken-USER/previous-session-*.log

These files will store important information which will allow genshiken to restore your previous sessions.

HOME/.config/genshiken-USER/details/Anime_ Type /series_ * .txt

These files store and categorize a series of anime links alphabetically. All anime menus are based off of these files, and are created after parsing the HTML of the downloaded Anime-List.

HOME/.config/sleep.log

This file can be used to control when the debug prompt, during a [DEBUG] session executed by the --verbose option, should execute and print the next command expansion from genshiken. Controlling this file is simple. I’ve exported a sleep(1) command inside the PS4 variable, that tells bash how long genshiken should stay idle for. When you execute the --verbose option without giving it an argument, the default value inside HOME/.config/sleep.log is 0. A value of 0 means don’t wait, and a value of 1 means wait one second. If you want to change the speed during runtime: echo(1) a number greater than zero into this file to slow-down; echo(1) zero to go as fast as possible. You get the picture.

ENVIRONMENT

AUTHOR

Written by Michael Pagan

COPYING

Copyright © 2015-2016 Michael Pagan

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. Please refer to the ’COPYING.manual’ file for full details of the GNU Free Documentation License.

(a) Michael Pagan’s Back-Cover Text is: "You have the freedom to copy and modify this libre manual."