Dr. Zeuss' FG Resources

[Talen]

Dr. Z:

In looking at your website as I make another effort into parsing my own mods, I was wondering what the last 4 links on your tools page do -specifically:

FGII 4e Module Decompiler
DND4eRBFlufftoFGIIRefMan XSL
DND4eRPGAtoFGIIStory XSL
FGII4ESOWtoFGIIStory+Enc XSL

Im assuming the last 2 help when parsing RPGA and Scales of war modules...but unsure on the first 2 (or more importantly, how to use them).

As always -THANKS for everything, and any additional help is most appreciated!

[Zeus]

Talen, the XSL files are stylesheets that can be applied to an XML version of the PDFs to produce Parser compatible source files.

There are 3 versions, Rulebook (outputs a raw refmanual.txt version of the rulebook reference text), RPGA (for RPGA PDF modules) and SoW (for SoW/Dungeon PDFs).

You will need to have a copy of Adobe Pro 9.0 and either XML Notepad or another application that can manage XSLT transformations. See here for more information.

Lastly the decompiler tool does exactly that, given a db.xml, client.xml or common.xml from a compiled 4E compatible module, the app outputs text source files which can then be used to re-compile (parse) the module again. A useful tool if you ever lose the original source files to any of your modules.

[Talen]

Got it. Can any of the stylesheets be used to convert a WOTC module I have OCR'd? Specifically, Im looking to convert the Slaying Stone module (with the new NPC template), but I have a few other adeventures I could try as well with the old format.

[PublicJohnDoe]

Posted in the other thread you mentioned, but it rightly belongs here, so...


DrZ, I tried to use the DnD4eRBFlufftoFGIIReferenceManual v1.1.xls for the rulebooks, but I get an error saying that it can't find
"str\functions\tokenize\str.tokenize.msxsl.xsl "

I looked into the XLS code, and it has the following:

<xsl:include href="str/functions/tokenize/str.tokenize.msxsl.xsl"/> 
<xsl:include href="str/functions/split/str.split.xsl"/>

I've searched around the 'Net for str.tokenize and str.split, found 2 files and created the paths, but it still gives me an error saying
"'tokenize()' is an unknown XSLT function."

What am I doing wrong?

[Zeus]

I posted a reply in the other thread but for easier reference I believe the issue is down to the XSLT engine you are using and it not supporting XSL 2.0.

XML Notepad which is what I use, works fine with XSL 2.0 stylesheets. Try that.

[EugeneZ]

God. I love you, XSLT, but you suck.

I've worked on several XSLT projects, one of them with a team of twenty developers, and in each and every case, XSLT seems like the right tool for the job until right after you've released it and once you start trying to maintain it.

Stuff like the above incompatibility issues are one of the many reasons I personally don't believe XSLT has a place in the FG2 world. DnD is just too complex to decoratively transform, in my opinion.