The Adblock Project

Guest

I have tried copying Aaron Spuler's list of filters to Notepad and then saving the file. When I try to import the file into Adblock I get a file not valid error message. What is the best way of getting a list such as this into Adblock?

Regards,

Nick

Aaron Spuler · QA Testing Joined: 23 Oct 2003 Posts: 19

Here's what I do when I'm using that filter list and not at home. I copy the link location for the filter list, then open adblock, and select import filters, and then past the link location into the file field and it works ok for me. Here's the direct link for the filter: http://www.txstate.edu/~as1130/themes/adblock.txt

rue · Developer Joined: 22 Oct 2003 Posts: 752

Aaron:
Unfortunately, that solution is os-specific -- link-locations can't be used that way on the mac.
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If someone could post a copy of the non-importable file(s), I'd be happy to land a patch.

Guest · Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 Post subject:

I'm on WinME and that does not work either. I get the message "c:\http://www.txstate.edu/~as1130/themes/adblock.txt The above name is invalid".

I have tried highlighting the section on Aaron's site, then right clicking, Save Frame as ... which saves the frame as adblock.txt by default. Trying to import this also gives a file not valid error message.

If I right click on the link above and choose save link to disk, I get another error message saying "The link could not be saved. The web page might have been removed or had its name changed"

At this point I am stumped. More help would be appreciated.

Nick

Aaron Spuler · QA Testing Joined: 23 Oct 2003 Posts: 19

wierd, maybe try to select all the text, and then copy and paste into a text file and then try to import it? i don't know....

http://www.cs.swt.edu/~as1130/themes/adblock.txt is the direct link to my filter file...

rue · Developer Joined: 22 Oct 2003 Posts: 752

Aaron:
Just to clarify: I'm not sure you realized you posted two different links. The first only linked to an error-page.
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Could you zip + post a notepad file for me? I'd like to test the linebreaks-issue again.

Aaron Spuler · QA Testing Joined: 23 Oct 2003 Posts: 19

Sent you the filter zip via email Smile

I didn't realize the first link was bad... i left off the ".cs." -- should have been http://www.cs.txstate.edu/~as1130/themes/adblock.txt

To be quite honest, the names swt.edu and txstate.edu are synonomous -- my school changed names from Southwest Texas State University to Texas State University. In December the swt.edu domain will no longer be valid. I need to get in the habit of using txstate.edu. Embarassed

dze27 · Guest

I had this problem too. I was getting File Not Valid after I saved the adblock.txt file on your web site and tried to import that. Then, I exported my existing (empty) file, opened it in a text editor, and copied and pasted the entire contents of the saved adblock.txt file into it, imported that (i.e. the file I just exported) and that worked. Weird.... Anyway it's working now, sweet!

This happened both at home and at work so it's not my imagination.

A problem with the line separator characters, I wonder? I'm on Win2K.

Guest · Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2003 Post subject:

dze27's work around method worked this morning. I had to edit the line which was imported where I pasted the text, but otherwise OK. It looks like there is a problem in this area.

As a question on the same theme, but perhaps needing a new thread, as adblock says it can use regular expressions, there is a much more comprehensive list of ad sites here. Would this work with adblock or does it need re-formatting?

rue · Developer Joined: 22 Oct 2003 Posts: 752

Guest:
That list would only need minor modification:
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1. the first line must read "[Adblock]" and nothing else
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2. every regular-expression (ie. all other lines) must begin and end with the forward-slash '/', which means..
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3. all pre-existing forward-slashes must be turned into literals. just search+replace '/' with '\/'.

Guest · Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2003 Post subject:

Rue, thanks for your reply. I may try and give it a go, but I'm going to have to write some sort of program to do it. It is easy to do the changes you suggest but the results look a little odd. The problem is saving the file. If I save it as a text file from something like notepad, it imports incorrectly into adblock, as notepad saves files with <cr> <lf> as an end of line marker. Adblock does not strip out the <cr> character when it imports the file.

Guest · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 Post subject:

Rue, I tried editing the list as you suggested. but it blocked every image at http://www.ntlworld.com which is incorrect. It did not do that for the program the list was originally compiled for (AdExtinguisher) so it looks like the lists are not directly transferrable. I just thought the list would be a good starting point but I do not understand regular expressions or the blocking method enough to convert the list.

Nick

rue · Developer Joined: 22 Oct 2003 Posts: 752

Nick:
The list was full of "half-regular" expressions -- a simplified notation was aberrantly mixed in. Additionally, there were a few spaces in the expressions.
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AdExtinguisher might have been tolerant, but Adblock is not.
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Here's a repaired copy of your list -- formatted + tested, including for the site you gave.

Guest · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 Post subject:

Rue,

That's what I call service. Thanks. If I post again I'll register properly.

Nick

dipa · Guest

I suspect that Windows users might notice it more frequently. I used DOS->UNIX conversion of Ultraedit once when I compiled a list from Mozillazine forum. Then I added the "[Adblock]" header and I was able to import the list. Before doing that, I was getting the "invalid" message.

rue · Developer Joined: 22 Oct 2003 Posts: 752

Since Sunday, "List Import" has used regexp to learn a file's linebreak-structure.
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It should work universally, now.
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The Dev. page always links to the latest nightly

Guest · Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2003 Post subject: Totally lost....

Could someone give me a hand here?

I've tried all the solutions on here and no matter what I always get the "File Not Valid" error. Got any ideas?

Or could one of you just make the right file to import? On windoze, and tried both Aaron's and the guest_translater_filters.txt files.

rue · Developer Joined: 22 Oct 2003 Posts: 752

Guest:
Which version of windows?

Guest · Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2003 Post subject:

98 SE

NJH · Joined: 13 Nov 2003 Posts: 183 Location: Hampshire, England

I was the guest who started this thread. I used dze27's suggestion above and it worked for me. I created a dummy line with something like ZZZZZ in the current file then exported it. I inserted the new text before the ZZZZZ entry and then saved and imported the file. I think I only had to sort out the last line which was corrupt

One thing which sort of fell out of this via another thread was that I had downloaded on old version of AdBlock from texturizer.net. I believe rue has done some work on his latest nightlies to sort out some of the issues with importing files such as end of line delimiters which I think I may have been facing.