[WIP] F1 help content

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aroleon
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[WIP] F1 help content

Post by aroleon »

I'm working on the help files displayed when we press F1. Most of the additional text I have added comes from the wiki. I've found it useful, for example, to be able to press F1 in-game to get a list of which herbs are required for which dyes, or what is required to complete the such-and-such quest.

In Linux, I unzip these files into /usr/local/share/tmw/data/help. Perhaps someone else can post the folder to use for Windows?

Some of the formatting is wonky because the help files are plain-text, but displayed in a proportional font. The tables in Items/Health and Rauk the Alchemist are the worst. Probably not a lot I can do about that, unless there are more formatting commands I can use (see below)

Questions:
* Is this useful to anyone else (If not, I'll continue to use it myself anyway)?
* How do I get this into the next version of the client install (once I've completed it)?
* I've worked out (read: hacked/reverse-engineered) the colour formatting used in the help files. Are there any other formatting commands that would be useful to me?

thanks,

aro
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helpfiles.zip
unzip to your help folder -- see text for details
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Ces
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Re: [WIP] F1 help content

Post by Ces »

I’m not sure if it is possible to add to the help file contents with update or custom data, which I think is what you want. To include something data specific to the client would narrow its scope a lot (as different servers can and do use different sets of client data).
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Jaxad0127
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Re: [WIP] F1 help content

Post by Jaxad0127 »

Help files can be replaced by data updates.
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aroleon
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Re: [WIP] F1 help content

Post by aroleon »

Thanks, jaxad. Do you know what formatting commands besides ## and @@ can be used in the help files? (I don't know how to access the source code, and I'm not sure that I can read it anyway).

thanks again,

aro
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Jaxad0127
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Re: [WIP] F1 help content

Post by Jaxad0127 »

The help files aren't in the source code. You can view them online here: http://gitorious.org/tmw/mainline/trees ... /data/help.
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aroleon
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Re: [WIP] F1 help content

Post by aroleon »

No, you misunderstand. My question is, "what formatting codes may be used in the help files to cause them to display differently"?

Never mind, I found what I needed in .../src/gui/widgets/browserbox.cpp. Turns out C++ isn't as hard to read as I thought it might be (though too different from PostScript and python and shell scripting for me to be able to write it ... :))

To answer my own question, in case someone else wants to know:

To change the colour of the following text up to the end of the line, you can use the sequence ##x, where x is a digit from 0-9; each digit specifies a different colour.

To change the colour in the middle of a line, then change it back, use ##0 to terminate the colour change. As in:
  • Code: Select all

    this word will be ##1highlighted##0 and the rest of the line won't
To embed a link (a pointer to another help file), use the @@ sequence, which is formatted:
  • Code: Select all

    @@filename|Text to be displayed@@
    This will be displayed in the help file as Text to be displayed, and clicking on that link in the helpfile will attempt to load the file filename.txt
To display a horizontal line in the middle of the help file, use the sequence:
  • on a line by itself -- with no leading or trailing spaces
Help files must contain only 7-bit ascii -- UTF-8 or unicode text will crash the tmw client (!), which is likely to be a bug

thanks,

aro
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Jaxad0127
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Re: [WIP] F1 help content

Post by Jaxad0127 »

aroleon wrote:Help files must contain only 7-bit ascii -- UTF-8 or unicode text will crash the tmw client (!), which is likely to be a bug
Isn't that fixed now?
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aroleon
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Re: [WIP] F1 help content

Post by aroleon »

jaxad0127 wrote:
aroleon wrote:Help files must contain only 7-bit ascii -- UTF-8 or unicode text will crash the tmw client (!), which is likely to be a bug
Isn't that fixed now?
No, it happened to me last week using 0.0.29. Now I know how to use iconv :) . I don't know how to file a bug report, but I can probably recreate the bug for you.

aro
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