Content as Markdown Files

[Gix]

It seems to me that writing content would be MUCH easier to manage outside of Fantasy Grounds rather than within it. If we had a way to have Markdown files as a way to load and edit Campaign content it would make the process of creating content trivial and allow content creators to focus on the content itself rather than the process of creating it.

Given how simple markdown is, it would lend itself perfectly to FG translation.

[Talyn]

FG is XML markup and Lua scripts. For just content, you're looking at XML. I have 9 products in the store and more on the way and every single one of them were done in Notepad++ including the one I'm doing as I write this.

Someone (read: a community member because SmiteWorks doesn't have the staff to do such a project) would have to write a markdown-to-XML translator. One that can work with each ruleset's specific markup (usually window classes) and data paths.

[Gix]

Gotta say, as a developer, the whole, XML hell is a technical debt that should be paid off and move to JSON or something... you know... modern and relatively self-documenting

[Talyn]

Yeah my IT friends are like "XML? That still exists?" LOL but ya gotta work with what you're handed.

I'd love for the Unity client to move onto a more modern medium but for 100% backwards-compatibility... stuck with XML some more.

[Gix]

If I could actually... you know, LOOK at the content that I paid for in XML I could probably transform it, but since it's locked down in a passworded ZIP, I can't.

[Bidmaron]

Look at the free content. That offers ample models (well not the newest features, I don’t think).

Gix, it would never be as easy as you want it to be. You cannot expect software as sophisticated as FG or any program like it to natural-language parse a pdf, markdown, or any other general-purpose document format to get it into usable form. The xml is really a database.

[damned]

The new platform will still continue to be XML and LUA.

[damned]

Any content you create within FG can then be exported to a mod that will not be encrypted.
Zacchaeus has great videos on how to create many things in FG within the interface.

[Trenloe]

If we had a way to have Markdown files as a way to load and edit Campaign content it would make the process of creating content trivial and allow content creators to focus on the content itself rather than the process of creating it.

There was a tool that allowed this (PAR5E) but, as you can see from nearly 3000 posts in this thread, anything like that is far from *trivial* to use.

As has been mentioned, if you really want to hand edit stuff, then look at the format of some of the standard (non encrypted) FG modules, or create some records in a campaign and export to a module.

[celestian]

One of my hopes is that once FGU does come out and settles down that Smiteworks has a dev on the task of making content creation easier. Something like a WYSIWYG Ref-manual creation tool. If they can keep people out of XML/LUA for content creation it would more than likely increase the amount of content created.