IMPORTANT UPDATE: ANOM has switched now to using OpenSeadragon for their digital collections instead of their old Java applet, which means that most of this project is now obsolete.
Visit https://fiendish.github.io/anom_exfiltrator for more details.
The rest of this document remains only for historical reflection.
( Questions or Feedback? You can either create an "issue" or contact me directly at [email protected] )~
Exfiltrate full document images from the Archives Nationales d'Outre-Mer digital archive instead of being forced to use their Java applet.
ANOM gives free access (yay!) to digital copies of archive materials only through a lol-welcome-to-the-90s Java applet (boo!). Each page of each document is served up in small fragments which are then stitched together on the screen (technical note: this is just like a tile server for a tiled web map). There's no good reason for them to do it that way today and many bad ones. It's archaic, likely vestigial from an era before there were better methods.
Anyway, the way they do it now makes their digital archive documents more difficult to use. The first step to making them easier to use is exfiltrating them past the applet barrier.
Want to throw all the document pages into a big PDF and carry it around with you? Maybe read it on the bus or airplane? Now you can with little effort. (On Mac, On Windows, On GNU/Linux)
This package requires Python3 and ImageMagick. Read further for instructions on installing them first.
It's easiest to install what you need to run this on MacOS with Homebrew.
- Go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app
- Inside the terminal, type
xcode-select --installand press enter. - When the message pops up asking if you want to install the command line developer tools, click
Install. - Install Homebrew by visiting http://brew.sh and following the instruction. (If it's not clear, you paste
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"into the Terminal and then follow the prompts.) - Install ImageMagick by typing
brew install imagemagick. - Install Python3 with
brew install python3. - Proceed to the Usage Guide below.
- If you don't know whether you have 32 or 64 bit Windows, first see: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/827218 or http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/21726/how-do-i-know-if-im-running-32-bit-or-64-bit-windows-answers/
- Install ImageMagick.
- If you have 64 bit Windows, download: https://www.imagemagick.org/download/binaries/ImageMagick-7.0.5-4-Q8-x64-dll.exe
- If you have 32 bit Windows, download: https://www.imagemagick.org/download/binaries/ImageMagick-7.0.5-4-Q8-x86-dll.exe
- Install Python3.
- If you have 64 bit Windows, download: https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.6.0/python-3.6.0-amd64.exe
- If you have 32 bit Windows, download: https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.6.0/python-3.6.0.exe
- During the Python3 install process, make sure to activate the option to "
Add python.exe to Path". You may need to restart your computer after installing Python3 before that starts working.
- Proceed to the Usage Guide below.
- Install ImageMagick and Python3 from your distribution's package repos.
- Proceed to the Usage Guide below.
- Download and unzip https://github.com/fiendish/anom_exfiltrator/archive/master.zip to your deskop.
- To exfiltrate an entire document (which may use a lot of space on your hard drive if the document is very large), run Exfiltrate_ANOM. Or to interactively browse one page at a time from a document, run Browse_ANOM.
The software asks you for an ANOM URL for a document you want to view or exfiltrate. This is how you get it.
-
Go find whatever document you're looking for.
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Instead of using their stupid Java applet, copy the link address for the document.
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Then paste the URL into the exfiltrator interface where it asks you.
