I'm finally going to be able to get around to testing this idea out, later today. The first test is going to be pretty simple - working out an easy way of importing/storing the markup, importing it and parsing it into something that can be easily worked with inside Lua.
The second test will be building off of the first, to create a proof-of-concept. This will basically be a demonstration of how it will work - importing the document, parsing it, and generating the UI it describes.
I will continue to update this thread with any (significant) progress I make throughout the weekend - and beyond. If this does turn out to be feasible, I will release a beta version of the library as soon as I at least have all the base LotRO API implemented. External UI libraries will be supported as well, although DUInterface will have priority - as it contains UI elements that are necessary for the main purpose of this project (Palantir).
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Originally Posted by lunarwtr
I too suffer from TMSPS (too many side project syndrome). I have a feeling the interface forums needs to form a support group for us. 
Suggestion I have regarding, would be to look into the addon authoring of some of the major IDE. There are many out there that already handle xml editing, syntax highlighting, and completion (if you include dtd or xsd support for your xml structure). The addon portion would then simply be a translation component for "export" or a preview type panel. I'd been looking at writing simple lotro api context support library for Eclipse, but got bogged down in TMSPS yet again. |
Funny that you should mention that, because I did release a LotRO API syntax highlighting pack for UltraEdit, Notepad++, and PSPad. I haven't gotten into doing stuff with IDEs yet - mostly because I save IDE work for compiled languages(C# is what I know the best, but I've done a bit of J2ME as well), and use UltraEdit for any scripting (Lua, PHP, JavaScript etc)
Still, it would be a good idea - I've noticed that there are those who prefer using an IDE for nearly everything, so I'm sure it would be useful. As far as previewing it, I don't think there's really a good way to integrate LotRO with any external apps - at least in that regard. I mean ideally, it would start up lotro, and load the plugin to test, in order to show it, but automatically logging in and selecting a character would be a headache - if not impossible, and you really can't send commands to the chat window externally.
What would be nice is a LotRO plugin emulator that would use LotRO's Lua library - or at the very least - a reproduction of it, so you could at least see the result of what you were writing (regardless of markup support), without having to jump through all the hoops to do so. Unfortunately, even if the library is accessible via the Win32 API, this is way out of my league. The best I'd be able to do is translate the Lua code in C#, and attempt to simulate the result - which is really a very ugly way of going about it.
As far as TMSPS goes, I'm pretty sure LI having a support forum for it would be akin to a bar holding an AA meeting
Besides, even if such a forum existed, we'd all find something that would improve the program, and start another side project to do so lol
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Originally Posted by The Old One
My training is in HTML and visual basic. I'd like to try making plugins but don't know lua and to be honest the UiBuilder is about the limit of my skill ATM but would love something that would make it easier for me to learn/adapt from my skills.
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Ideally it would work very similar to how JavaScript/HTML works - with something similar to the skinning system, instead of HTML tags. But the general idea would be the same - the layout would be taken care of by the tags, and Lua would be used to get an element, and do something with it.
I mean, plugins in LotRO are really no different in complexity than creating a web app - so if it works for the web, why not do it with LotRO?