Manual & Icons

[PolyVinalDistillate]

This topic interests me! (and I just learned not to type messages in the forum reply window because it logged me out before posting and I lost the message! Grrrr!!).

Anyway - I have LaTeX experience, and approve whole-heartedly of its use in manual construction - it offers the chance to make a beautiful, consistantly formatted document even if several writers are involved, without all that 'tidying up the final document' messing about that's needed in a typical word processor. Perhaps wiki format is ok, however I personally like being able to write without the involvement of the internet in compiling documents, and being able to define reuseable LaTeX modules to make things all the prettier.

To get more on-topic, I would like to contribute. I've not read much of the existing manual yet because I couldn't help but start editing the bits on file and directory structure while I was reading (no offence sirherrbatka). As I was editing however, I became more and more aware of having no idea of what direction I was editing in, the target audience, and the general structure the manual should follow! Some of this may be solved when I load up the manual a second time and read it without editing, which I'm determined to do (had to go to bed last time 'cause it was late).

It may be a little premature for me to say this without reading the manual properly, but I have no idea of the OpenCS paradigm. I've loaded up OpenCS on a couple of occasions, and honestly it's so alien compared to TesCS I don't even know where to begin getting to grips with it. I suspect that much of this will start to make sense as OpenCS grows, but I'm very much in the dark for now. I've seen the comments from Zini that there's a wealth of information in the forums, but the trouble is that the pertinent information is spread very thinly unless I've been looking in the wrong places (and I have been lurking regularly for several months now).

So the main purpose of this post is to express an interest, stand up for the use of LaTeX, and to illicit (possibly exasperated) reponses about where to look for details on the general paradigm of OpenCS.

To give you an idea of what I'm likely to understand (or not) - I have modding and scripting experience in MW - nothing huge, but enough to have used most of the TesCS.. ahem.. 'features' at least once. I also have C++ experience and would contribute at that end if I wasn't scared of astronomical codebases and setting up an environment in Windows (yup - sorry - not a Linux user). Anyway, I'm happy to look through source files for comments if there are any helpful comments there to look at and I can figure out which bits of source do what.

[PolyVinalDistillate]

I've been playing about with the OpenCS a bit more, and I think I'm beginning to get the hang of it! I believe there was already some documentation on referencables in sirherrbatka's docs, but I've started redocumenting it myself as I mess about with OpenCS to get comfier with the software. There are a few areas I'm unsure of, but it could be because I'm a lil rusty on the MW modding (it has been a while!).

I've (theoretically) attached a .pdf file to indicate the format I'm thinking with the first 2 referencable types kinda described. The words aren't final yet (and there's a few questions popped up already). I would attempt to attach a .tex file that could be included in the existing main.tex with a \input"", but it seems only 1 file per post is allowed or I'm being thick! Anyway, how it appears in the pdf is probably more useful when I'm looking for input.

So folks - along the right lines? Waste of time? Want me to concentrate my efforts elsewhere? Prefer I just stay out of it? I await your thoughts!

[Nomadic1]

I never really got what a referencable was before I read that pdf

[Zini]

Have to rub it in, hm? I know I suck at naming things. But the whole MW terminology is a mess anyway. There is probably not a lot we can do to improve that (besides explaining it in the manual).

[Zini]

@PolyVinalDistillate: That looks really nice.

In the future could you please push your work to github? That makes it easier for everyone involved.

Regarding the content of the PDF. Scripts run all the time when in active cells. The activator is triggered by the interact button (there is no open button). Potion referenceables in the content files are only for pre-defined potions (not user-created).

[sirherrbatka]

Well done! But we should coordinate our effort, so we will actually be able to make something together!

[PolyVinalDistillate]

I never really got what a referencable was before I read that pdf

I wasn't entirely sure either til I wrote it!!

Have to rub it in, hm? I know I suck at naming things. But the whole MW terminology is a mess anyway. There is probably not a lot we can do to improve that (besides explaining it in the manual).

In terms of referenceable, I think that's a reasonable enough term. It's just pointing out that referenceables covers pretty much everything that the player can interact with that took me a tick to realise. I think a glossary of terms is vital to allow several manual writers to maintain consistency. I knew, for instance, that "Open button" was wrong, but couldn't decide on a better name for it at the time. "Interact button" sounds far, far better! One major benefit of LaTeX is that we can represent such buttons as "\InteractButton", and then define "\InteractButton" to be whatever we want at a later stage (taking it as an example - I'm not suggesting a terminology change is necessary here).

As for pushing work to github.. firstly I don't know how (but I'm sure I can figure it out with a lil research), and secondly I'm not really sure what kind of animal github is.. I thought it best to post here to begin with to see if my contribution was likely to be a contribution first...

we should coordinate our effort, so we will actually be able to make something together!

...and to get sirherrbatka's attention for collaboration.

Scripts run all the time when in active cells. The activator is triggered by the interact button (there is no open button). Potion referenceables in the content files are only for pre-defined potions (not user-created).

Excellent! I shall have many such questions cropping up I suspect!

[sirherrbatka]

Well, you should learn a bit of git. It is not that difficult, on a basic level. There are also clients that can help you, for instance SourceTree which seems to be popular (at least many folks at work are using it, personally i'm not that impressed).

[PolyVinalDistillate]

A little off topic.. I came across a client simply named "GitHub" that runs on my Windows machine. I think I've sussed it out. Going to try uploading changes and see what happens (apologies for the Revert followed by a Revert of the revert! I was experimenting and it's stuck there now I think!).

Is there an accepted format that title/description should have for commits?

EDIT: I have no permission to push changes anyway. Where to from here?

[Zini]

You are supposed to fork the OpenMW/openmw repository on github and then push to your fork.