Fantasy Grounds 5E db.xml character cycler OBS widget

[celestian]

with every update to FG.. its a setback and rewrite...

waiting on 3.3.7 to drop to try rewriting this again...

I'm curious what you mean here? It's a XML file and the format within that combattracker/charsheet block doesn't change much at all.

The benefit to using XML is that almost everything can read/manipulate it and ignore what you don't need/want.

I'm not privy to whatever language you are writing this in but most languages have libraries to parse/manage xml. All you need to do is grab the ct node and get the variables necessary for your displays.

Just seems a bit of a hassle for you whenever they need to make updates to FG your tool breaks specially when the data you need does not change.

[Moon Wizard]

The data for the combat tracker did not change in v3.3.7.

Regards,
JPG

[shadzar]

The benefit to using XML is that almost everything can read/manipulate it and ignore what you don't need/want.

except windows 10 and web browsers have same-origin disabled. so the newest OBS isn't able to read, READ the db.db.xml file at all.... so it can't do anything with it.

The data for the combat tracker did not change in v3.3.7.

Regards,
JPG

is it still being saved as ASCII/ANSI text?

how about this to the both of you.. anyway FG can save another file? not the db.xml, but can an extension cause a different file to be saved in ASCII text?

Like how people are asking for "printable character sheet" can FG take the data within and save an HTML file somehow... can the export function be made to do that?

that was my original plan but someone told me the db.xml is the only save you get for campaigns and everything done internally goes inside that.

if i could just get FG to save a file, i could make not only the character sheet printable thing working form an extension (when i figure it out0, but also the widget thing as well.

i just can't find any documentation on what type of files FG can create or where it creates them in any functions... even a boring CSV text file.

[Moon Wizard]

There are no plans for alternate outputs at this time. Any other output can be built from the XML, so not sure I see the benefit of implementing something different at this point, especially given our limited resources and priorities.

Regards,
JPG

[shadzar]

Any other output can be built from the XML

not, they aren't because modern browsers don't allow same-origin in order to read local files without disabling the browsers security to protect users from malicious scripts.

so nothing can READ the XML files at all unless it is a program. OBS widgets, arent programs

if there was anything that could allow a user of FG to save any ASCII file with the name chosen like the exported does a ASCII text, then extensions could be written to export any data in HTML format form the character sheet.

and i say EXPORT an ASCII file, that way it follows FG export rules s a not to export protected data from protected modules.

it jsut needs to NOT be XML, because go try to open an XML with a browser and see what you get. it needs to be able to use browser code that makes it legible for humans, not an internal parser.

again, this would allow the creation by the community for "printable character sheets".. which is basically what this widget is is creating... but it doesnt work when people have the security in their browser on, and i would NOT advocate anyone to even disable that same-origin security in OBS to make this work, or anything else unless they already do so as a web developer.

people need something they can use their game save data or that isn't XML so they can read it, not so FG can read it. and export format that is plain text and has the same data as the db.xml would be human readable, not machine readable and allow for MANY more things people can do with FG game save... like reenter data from a corrupt game save by hand if need be.... print the game to a real piece of paper to store a physical copy of the save, make a WordPress with the character info, etc.

all this is blocked by FG saving only as XML and not some other type of file to allow formatting of plain text formats such as HTML output which a user could create their own data structure, if only FG would allow saving an HTML file then an extension could be coded to do all the HTML coding and stuff, and as with all extensions, they are use/create at your own risk... but saving the HTML wouldnt interfere with the db.xml because it would b a separate file, and now able to corrupt a game save, and is NEVER read in by FG.. just saved as a file for humans to read the game save data.

it shouldnt take a sketchy 3rd party program that wouldnt know what else it does when it runs, to read in the db.xml, and export an HTML file from it.... but that is the only thing available right now without FG supplying a way to save an HTML file from reading its own character sheet tables.

this would b the beginning of an actual API to FG.. whatever other people are calling an API, i have no clue because it is all internal program hooks... there is no external access to the data that would constitute an API since everything done outside is with XML and not interfacing with the actual program running and the memory it uses unless it is a PART of the program, aka an extension.

at this point due to the nature of FG, this project is dead int he water. the only way to make it work would be if SmiteWorks supplied an area to upload db.xml files so that something could read then as something from online and not as local computer files due to web browser security features. because not everyone would have access to their own webserver to be able to copy and paste the db.xml file to, just to get the character data from.

[shadzar]

After extensive testing it appears FG had lots of errors in the coding of modules. many are not using ANSI or the iso-8859-1 text listed in the XML encoding attribute...

’ is not '

Nature’s Gift
Accursed Invocation has then in description also.. bad '...  can’t animate any

anywhere this certain ’ is appearing prevents anything form being done outside of FG with the XMLs since it is not the proper encoding of iso-8859-1.

this makes this widget impossible to create until every ’ in every FG module is replaced with a proper apostrophe thusly '.

not sure if someone coded modules in English-UK setting editor or keyboard layout, but HTML requires English-US, thus why HTML is always in English-US words like color not colour because it requires exact syntax.

so while FG and software made to emulate FG like Engineer Suite can convert these characters, there is too many UTF characters throughout FG products for any HTML interpreter to be able to read the XML properly.

no purchased module could be loaded or used, and everything would have to be typed by hand for this widget to be possible if the products in DMs Guild and FG store are not edited to use the correctly encoded character sets.

[LordEntrails]

anywhere this certain ’ is appearing prevents anything form being done outside of FG with the XMLs since it is not the proper encoding of iso-8859-1.

Perhaps posting this in the 5E bug thread or the House of Healing (depending if you have found it in only 5E products) with details such as which modules will raise the awareness so that they get on the list to be fixed, and more importantly, the process get corrected to stay true to ISO-8859-1.

Of course, DMsG products would have to reach out each author/converter.

[shadzar]

(depending if you have found it in only 5E products)

Well i know for a fact it is present here https://www.dmsguild.com/product/200...E-Player-Class

but that doesn't mean anything. FG is exporting the data as not ISO-8859-1 since it is just taking what it gets in any "string" and assuming it is formatted correctly when making a save file, without forcing the encoding to that which it is claiming to be.

i don't know how i would report that? FG fails to export as proper encoding because it isn't checking extensions and modules for proper coding when it loads them? you wold know those things beter than me, and have the information here in this thread to report it.

it could be in anything and as long as FG fails to check to make sure it is saving only ISO-8859-1 characters, then it could cause any manner of problems be it saving the module to begin with as an export, or saving a game file as a db.xml...

FG should really be handling all the proper encoding if it insists the XML files are of that encoding is best i can tell. /shrug

since FG doesn't check for proper encoding prior to exporting or saving, it could be present in any product of any ruleset.

[LordEntrails]

Well i know for a fact it is present here https://www.dmsguild.com/product/200...E-Player-Class

but that doesn't mean anything. ...

since FG doesn't check for proper encoding prior to exporting or saving, it could be present in any product of any ruleset.

No way to know for sure that module is actually being exported by FG and not created using one of the various external tools. Comparing the listed authors of the PDF and FG versions, I can see that it's converted by Rob Twohy, I will send him a DM and point him to this discussion. It could be that he's being given the file in something like Word, or it could be a copy/paste from PDF issue or...

But, raising the issue and asking the questions and pointing the correct people (in this case, Rob) to it, they can decide if its a big enough issue to warrant investigating their process and what it might take to resolve. If it were an official FG product, we could go to SW on it, but since it's not, it will really be up to Rob.

[shadzar]

No way to know for sure that module is actually being exported by FG

oh but it is. because when you save a campaign or it autosaves, FG is doing the export from RAM to the db.xml, and that is where i found this inside a db.xml. So FG is most certainly exporting it to a file and not validating that all the characters are ISO-8859-1.

so it wouldn't have to be everyone checking, for all we know Par5e could be the root cause, but as long as FG saves any files with non-ISO-8859-1 characters, then FG itself holds some of the blame for saying a file is ISO-8859-1 when it is not.

it means it also doesn't validate if the incoming modules are the encoding they claim to be.