Just Testing Appetite...

[Foen]

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 comes with an option to extend its language-savviness to include any user-provided language. It also comes with a royalty-free redistributable shell.

Is there any appetite amongst the community to build a royalty-free FG IDE with Lua and XML editing capabilities?

I'm not talking about anything as sophisticated as RuleForge (which looks to hide the ruleset plumbing whenever possible), but just an FG-friendly envirnoment to edit XML and Lua files.

Having never used Notepad++ (which I believe also does both XML and Lua), I'm not sure if the effort would be warranted, but should be keen to find out what others think.

Just a thought

Stuart

[Spyke]

What would be involved in this, Stuart? What features would this have?

I use the editor that comes with the free Visual Basic Express Edition (and Visual C++, etc), which is pretty handy for editing both the xml and the lua files. It recognises the xml keywords well and copes fine with the lua (though isn't lua-savvy).

Spyke

[Foen]

I use VS 2008 Pro, which is pretty much the same as the Express Edition.

I think the alternative would be xml and lua friendly, and have the normal VS look and feel. It's the Lua-aware part that appeals to me.

Stuart

[Tokuriku]

I suggest you try Notepad++ first.
It does XML and Lua perfectly.
But maybe your in for something even more visual.

[Griogre]

I have both Notepad++ and VS. I use VS for anything complicated and Notepad++ for the other. Notepad++ is not bad as an IDE, but VS has better editing features.

I actually use Notepad++ at times because it has more "slop" in its XML parser and accepts things it should not - it’s not very strict. This means it's good for editing things that choke VS because they are the wrong encoding. However this does mean it will allow you to enter characters that FG will choke on.

I think you are better off building things from scratch with Visual Studio because it will catch things that can show up as problems later. The argument can be made that VS is too strict because FG doesn't rigidly follow the iso-8859-1 standard and will parse in characters not in the standard, though.

As far as Foens original question, I think it would be nice but I don't think I would personally use it much because I don't have the time to do lua scripting now.

[Foen]

Just a quick proof-of-concept post.

I have built a Lua add-on for VS, which handles syntax-colouring. I'm now looking to add outlining.

According to the MS site, I can distribute a stand-alone VS-based editor, for anyone to use, for no fee.

If this gets up and running, there is no reason why more visual editing tools for FG couldn't be added.

Stuart

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/download/FGStudio.png

[Oberoten]

Just a quick proof-of-concept post.

I have built a Lua add-on for VS, which handles syntax-colouring. I'm now looking to add outlining.

According to the MS site, I can distribute a stand-alone VS-based editor, for anyone to use, for no fee.

If this gets up and running, there is no reason why more visual editing tools for FG couldn't be added.

Stuart



This has some PROMISE to say the least.

- Obe

[Bidmaron]

Foen, sign me up for your Lua editor. Will the free express edition use editor plug-ins or do I have to own the Standard or Pro edition?
--Dale--

[Foen]

I was thinking of distributing this as a full product, not a plug-in. Microsoft provides a stand-alone shell which can be freely redistributed.

That way no-one has to have VS installed already and I think it will take fewer machine resources (because it doesn't need to load the rest of VS).

Stuart

[Oberoten]

Very nice, this sounds like a major help for the coding side.

[Spyke]

Looks great, but I am deeply disturbed by the window title in the screenshot.

;)

Spyke

[Tenian]

It seems to be a definite step up from the 8 copies of notepad I have open!

[Oberoten]

Looks great, but I am deeply disturbed by the window title in the screenshot.

;)

Spyke

I agree, anything with either "Exprimental" "Hive" or "Cthulhu" is sligtly scary, combination of TWO of them sends shivers down the spine.. three is probably cause for running and screaming as well as SAN los.

[Foen]

*wicked grin*

Well, you didn't think I achieved all this diabolical coding without some help did you?

Stuart
:ogre:

[Valarian]

Looks very interesting and could be an improvement over the JEdit text editor I use currently. JEdit is just a basic text editor with XML/Lua highlighting. Would this do any basic validation?