Personal Torrent Collector (PTC)
PTC is a new client for the growing community of bittorrent users. It is basically a nice user interface for the bittorrent engine created by Bram Cohen with some built in search capabilities.
It has a number of advantages over the orginal clients:
- * It allows you to throttle downloads, shares upload bandwidth between downloads automatically allowing you to have open a number of files you are seeding and will maximize your upload bandwidth.
* It gives you the option of minimizing to the taskbar
* It looks much cooler
* takes file input in a variety of ways
- o Clicking on a link in the browser
o dragging files onto the window
o Entering a web address in the textbox at the top and pressing "Get Torr."
o Opening a locally cached torrent using the "use Torr" button or "Open Torrent" menu option
* Caches all torrents in a user definable directory
* Downloads all files to user definable directory, eliminating the annoying dialog box asking where to save the file * Supports RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds that contain bittorrent links. Servers that support this (mine is currently the only one, soon...) can run a simple script I put together to export their database information to RSS format. Then all the user needs to do is enter the address of the RSS file into the RSS feed list in the prefrences menu. All searches and downloads will display the picture specified by the RSS feed and provide right click links to the main web site and another secondary one probably best suited to Donation requests.
Where's the Source/ Linux copy? Those of you using linux might be wondering how you can get your hands on a copy of this amazing software and are curious that you cant find the source. Its not up there for three main reasons:
- 1. Most of the best features are windows specific, dont seem to work in linux
2. Alot of this code, especially the RSS parser, is pretty quick and dirty and I am embarressed to have people see it in its current state.
3. And I know I am probably going to get flamed for this but here it is: I am a big supporter of open source but until I have figured out how to cite Bram correctly and mark this stuff as my own I dont want to have the source out there. I know there is a very similar client in development but until that guy agrees to share his source with me I dont really want him using mine. Dont get me wrong, I dont expect money or anything to come from this but I do want people to use it, validate some of the hours I wasted writing this thing.
Installation instructions
Download most recent PTCinstaller-v0.x.exe file and run, installs to C:/Program Files/PTC/. If I've added multiple new features it might revert your settings to default so check to make sure.
Installation instructions (v0.5.1 and earlier)
- * Unzip all the files to a directory
* Run PTC.exe, go to prefrences (cntl+P) and set the download directory and chache directory
* Find a torrent on your machine, or download one with PTC then go to your chache directory and just right click it (shift right-click for win 98)and go to "open with" and browse to the PTC directory and select PTC.exe and then mark the box labeled, "ALways use this program to open this type of file"
Version 0.6 4/27/2003-
- * Finally set up installer, just run and it installs to c:/program files/PTC youll need to copy incomplete downloads to this folders directory or change the settings to point back your old directory.
* With the installer, the MIME types are set right so there shouldnt be the crashes on opening files from explorer
* Added Overall Upload Speed setting- Will automatically distribute outgoing bandwidth over the active torrents. EDIT: Upgraded distribute function to split bandwidth only over active downloads, means you can open ten files and only those with activity will share the bandwidth you set in the prefrences.
* Fixed RSS list so it clears previous searches
* Added "clear" option to download list
* Added "Pause" button that reduces all active downloads to 1 kB/s
* Fixed bug with the queueing that meant that the second file queued never displayed anything in the download panel.
Version 0.5 4/13/2003-
- * Fixed bug with handleing of opening of file when the prgram is already running
* Added support for user configurable upload speeds
* Updated these web pages
* Fixed a bunch of miscillanious bugs, should be much more solid now
* Added try/except clauses to keep errors to a miniumum
* Threaded the downloading of all files to keep the inteface from appearing to hang
Version 0.4.5 4/10/2003-
- * Added pretty pictures to RSS download list
* Cleaned up code
* Upgraded BT to 3.2.1 and the neat things from Brams experimental client
* Uploads can be throttled
* Added menu options to visit homepage of RSS clients
* The second RSS feed is dead go to the prefrences and remove it
* Tried to convince people to publish their lists as RSS... No luck so far, help me out here
* Help button does nothing yet, damn crippiling laziness...
Version 0.4 4/7/2003-
- * Removed worthless buttons, addded menu and status bar
* Made a preferences dialog box
* Made the prefences pickle to a text file or make a new one if there is none
* Implemented a queue to speed loading time, allocates or checks only onefile at a time
* Right clicking now allows you to kill a download, doesnt tell you that it has done it though...
* Cleanedup interface a bit you can now change the cache and download directories
* Major revision to RSS script for servers, first public release, runs on mySQL (I need someone to help me test this out on a foreign DB)
Version 0.3 3/31/2003-
- * Added counter 10:06 pm, just one visit by 10:07
* Added list interface, working on making it work with right clicks...
* dumped the really ugly download panels
* Fixed the thread leaks, shouldn't leave PTC.exe as a running process
* Added support for RSS feeds, now all we need is for websites to start using them (I do but my database just has old data in it)
* Fixed some problems with copying of bittorrent files to the wrong places
* This week I will clean up the interace so that there is only useful buttons left but until then...
- o "Search" - Uses xmlrpc to query my server's database for torrents, nothing much in there now.. Not till some legal issues are worked out - Use the textbox above the button to type in search terms, leave blank for all
o "RSS" - Also queries my server's database but uses RSS feed format
o "Display" - Dumps all the bittorrent info into debug window, use to see upload speed once file is finished
o "Errors" - Dumps errors for all downloads, Don't worry about "Problem connecting to tracker" messages
o "Download" - Same as double clicking on list item, downloads the selected torrent from the list and starts the torrent
o "kill" - use this button to kill a download, downloads are ordered from 0..1..2..3 going down the list, type the number in the box below the button. *there seems to be some problems with this for 0 right now, but hey you want to leave them open as long as possible anyways right :)
o "Get Torr" - copy a web address for a torrent into the textbox above this button and press it to download the file to your torrents directory and start downloading the file itself
o "Use Torr" - Select a .torrent to start downloading, only one at time right now...
Version 0.2.5 3/25/2003-
- * Fixed the really easy crashes caused by people pressing buttons at the wrong time, not bulletproof by any means
* Tryed to encapsulate all the windows specific functions in IF clauses to protect the uber-computer-users from taskbar icons and instance checkers
* Added rudimentary labels to the interface
* Now uses only one instance in Windows passes all calls to the running instance
* Supports files being dropped on it, opened with the "use torr" button, taken striaght from a url with "get Torr", and files taken from my xmlrpcserver
* Search calls my server that has a list of shows with their torrents, eventually will be used to schedule downloads of soon to be released shows.
Version 0.2 3/24/2003-
- * First release other people saw...
* Minimizes to taskbar