Standardization thoughts...

[MonkeyBoy]

interfaces

Yup, I'd like the same sorts of functionality for my initiative program (InitBrowse) the ability to do the following in fact;

Call Tablesmith to get a result (treasure specifically)

Call Table smith sending in a SEED so I always get the same result (not as silly as it sounds!)

Get just the final calculated initiative out of a PCGen character file

Basically, for me at least, the way to go about this kind of interface (client-server) is to implement a command line interface, say such that issuing the command;

pcgen -v final_initiative mychar.pcg

would echo the value of final_initiative to the command line - I can then do the scooping back into my program. I'm hypothesising -v for "get value" here...

I think Tablesmith either does do this, or does something similar, CLI i mentioned in the docs somewhere, I think.

Obviously, since InitBrowse uses mostly web pages, I can (and do!) interface with the final output of PCGen...

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From my last looks, the d20 stat block was all very good, but thats an output templating issue, rather than a sensible way to do data transfer (standardised abbreviations are useful though) The main problem with it is I _hate_ their chosen format. Fortunately, since its a templating thing, it doesn't matter!

The d20 XML thing looked to be going no-where when I looked, and IMHO, what it had produced was NOT a good abstraction of the D20 data-space into XML, more a sprinkling of tags into the srd docs...

(wrapping the srd text in xml tags is not very productive, really. and producing attmempts at that kind of exercise doesn't, in actuality, move you any closer to a useful framework)

 

[MythosaAkira]

DM's Familiar has tables in Visual Foxpro format. Will Tablesmith be able to read that format any time soon? No? I don't blame you.

Can't go to sleep...Foxpro will eat me...can't go to sleep...Foxpro will eat me...

Just some bad memories of a recent project at work. Actually not Foxpro's fault, moreso the consultants who used it.

No, TS won't be reading Foxpro any time soon, or even not-so-soon... I'm trying to stick to text-based formats, so the most people need for customization is Notepad.

Would I would really like to see from the folks writing "utility" programs (Tablesmith, Weathermaster, Jamis Generators, etc.) would be a way to let other programs (the "server" programs like DM's Familiar, RPM, etc.) call your program and return results without any user interface.

Actually, you can call TableSmith and feed it parameters on the command-line; you could do that, delay a bit, send a Windows command to shut down TS, then parse the "Temp.html" file it generates (the header and footer are standard so they can easily be stripped away). The UI would still pop-up, at least momentarily.

I haven't changed that yet, as I got burned by an gaming-app programmer a few years ago. He tried to incorporate TS functionality into his program, as well as a bunch of tables written by myself and others; the functionality thing is nothing I could do anything about (nor would I have tried), but he claimed the tables as his own creation and was charging money for the program. After I contacted him, his solution to fixing the problem was for me to give him the TS code so he could implement all its functionality and in return he'd put a link to me on his Web page...

Because of that, I've been leary about making it too easy for someone to incorporate TS into another project without the user being aware of what was going on. I don't mind the idea of someone using TS as a generation engine in their own project, just so long as the user is aware of what's going on.

In any case, it's something I can look at again. I haven't given it much thought in awhile.

 

[MonkeyBoy]

tablesmith

The best solution to this problem, I think, is to require that the full, normal installation of TS is there for the client program to use. Rather than "including" its funcitonality inside another program.

Therefore the user would need to have downloaded the TS program, and could therefore be assumed to know where it came from That then might make it OK to have a "no gui" mode...

I'm going to have a go with this CLI and temp.html opportunity though...

Inside a program that wishes to use TS, you would need the user to specify where their installation was for the client to call. (i'm thinking back to older winzip versions I used, where I used to tell it where to find the LHA executable to add that functionality - I had to already have LHA standalone to get the extras...)

It would be useful for this kind of interraction for the results to be returned via stdout (into C mode we go...) since then most programming languages' system call mechanism will collect it automatically...
Oh, Bruce there's one bug I found recently in TS; if you use the rerolling option (where the results become links and if you click they reroll themselves - good for gem generation and spells I find!) and then export to HTML, those links remain, but are broken (as in they link to nothing). Probably better to drop the links at export time.

 

[MonkeyBoy]

note to self; read web page BEFORE commenting...

Just been to mythosa.net; please ignore the man behind the curtain

 

[smetzger]

I haven't changed that yet, as I got burned by an gaming-app programmer a few years ago. He tried to incorporate TS functionality into his program, as well as a bunch of tables written by myself and others; the functionality thing is nothing I could do anything about (nor would I have tried), but he claimed the tables as his own creation and was charging money for the program. After I contacted him, his solution to fixing the problem was for me to give him the TS code so he could implement all its functionality and in return he'd put a link to me on his Web page...

Because of that, I've been leary about making it too easy for someone to incorporate TS into another project without the user being aware of what was going on. I don't mind the idea of someone using TS as a generation engine in their own project, just so long as the user is aware of what's going on.

That sucks. I'll take note of this with my programs. I was thinking of using MIDAS or OLE Automation for this sort of thing. If I do, I will be sure to include something in the license agreement.

 

[MythosaAkira]

Re: tablesmith

Inside a program that wishes to use TS, you would need the user to specify where their installation was for the client to call. (i'm thinking back to older winzip versions I used, where I used to tell it where to find the LHA executable to add that functionality - I had to already have LHA standalone to get the extras...)

That's not a bad idea; I'll start looking at something like that when I get a chance.

 

[Leopold]

Installation setup is easy once you get the hange of it. I use Mindvision installervise and it pretty much walks you through the setup creation. Best part is that it creates one big .exe and you can uset that as the main installation. You don't need tons of .cabs or .zips to do it, one stop click.

I use installervise to create my pcgen installer program as well as bundle other apps in with it. I find it helpful and resouceful and worth using.

Oh i forgot to mention: It's free....