I thought we should discuss the reference language because if you support a different one you make Traipse essentially non-compliant. You've already broken backwards compatibility with 1.7.1 and I expect some sheets would not work on Traipse. You are telling people with technical difficulties to try Traispe but not mentioning their character sheets (often mandated by the DM) might break. I don't think that's really fair on the customers.

OTOH as of right now it may be a minimal number of people effected. I don't think many people, probably no people, are actually using either of our systems, so we have a window to reconcile these differences. This should certainly be done.

I should point out that I am trying to hold things together with OpenRPG being compliant too, whereas some code checked in a while back (repaired by me) would have meant essentially that Traipse couldn't run on OpenRPG servers.

None of this is good news for the customer. I think your comparison with Linux is false there. The user base is not large enough for a split. It's been done before and none of the splitters survived the split as far as I know.

How have I broken compatibility with 1.7.1 nodes? And you are quite incorrect. I tell the users that the Character sheets are not compatible with the Standard referencing system.

Apple has a niche market .. but I also think that you don't know the number of users who use Traipse. A lot of people use Traipse. Sometimes I see entire rooms full of Traipse users. It started as a few people, some of us with our discontent for the current development team, others because the Standard version continues to add features without fixing old bugs.

I think you are mistaken in calling my comparison to Linux false. In fact, I have seen more development activity from non-developers because of Traipse's openness than I have seen since I even became interested in OpenRPG.

I also think you need to look at the Map Code from FlexiRPG that you have added. How dare you assume that OpenRPG would even have that code addition if it was not for the FlexiRPG split? With additions like that, OpenRPG should split more!

I had to correct about 20 major bugs and reverse some features in that (FlexiRPG) set of code.

========================

As I said I think you broke the ability to find a node by its leaf name that 1.7.1 had.

As did I. But still you added the code.



I don't see the damage in that right now. I am trying to find out what you mean by 'leaf node'. Up until this point we have talked about parents and children, and 'leaf node' is new terminology.

If that is the biggest of losses, I don't so a huge loss at all. The Traipse game tree is something users are interested in, and this I know because they have expressed interest in it.

I hope you understand that I don't take your opinion without taking others opinions with it. If 5 people like something that I have done, and only one person doesn't ... I am going to stick with me and the 5 people that like it.

Actually I didn't add the code; someone else did. I just had to fix it so it would work. That was very odd. It was not added well so far as I can see. Just shoved in and not tested.

By "leaf node" I mean "not a container node". Leaf as in the "tree" metaphor is a part of the tree that doesn't extend (contain) to other things. What I mean by the leaf name would be simply the name of the target node without any pathway information. 1.7.1 had it so you could type in the name of any node (inside the !@....@!) and it would find it -- or at least the first node with that name.

Anyway on Traipse front I got something running but it doesn't seem to ... well i can't see where to switch to alpha or beta. it has something called Grumpy and Ornery. I do dislike naming version numbers. Apart from anything else it is not clear what is the more recent version. I guess that's a Linux thing. People invented numbers because they are useful for counting. I'll stick with 1,2,3,4 etc. But anyway.. how do I switch branches on the updater? Or is that something I do only outside the program with the "hg update alpha" thing?

Where / who are these people you are getting feedback on Traipse from? I've found it very hard to get any feedback. At least I have my own play group to get feedback from. And of course on these boards Paul and others. However nobody but me has tried to make a character sheet for it. I assume the same is true for Traipse. In part this is why I feel we can prevent a split because nobody out there is using either system as yet.

At any rate we should list the features of the new 1.8.0+ dev reference system here, and then I think, perhaps come at the problem from another angle, and talk about the practical problems that we're trying to solve with all these changes. To be honest I am not sure I can recall all the features.

1.8.0+ dev
(1) full backwards compatible except for the unknown "!@top container::leafname@! option introduced in 1.7.5 which can be mimiced by making the top container a namespace (one click).
(2) locality is implemented through designating certain container nodes as namespaces (ie: "character sheets") References within a namespace first try to find their node target by assuming that the path is local to the namespace container. As if the only thing in the tree was that namespace content. The syntax is completely unchanged from 1.7.1, it just gets applied first, to the namespace.
(3) additional node targets are allowed (beyond text and macro nodes) namely lists, resource, grid row nodes.
(4) you can mark some nodes as non-indexed; they will be ignored by the reference system. This can be useful if you have a lot of nodes you never reference but have the exact same name as nodes you do.
(5) character sheets (or parts of them) can be copied with name-replacement easily. This will produce a working set of nodes whether they work by local references or name-mangling or even old-style global references.
(6) the references are now stored in a map instead of searching through the tree each time (much faster)
(7) bonuses and effects (in a plugin) can be applied to nodes that look like integers
(8) min(,) and max(,) are calculated in nodes
(9) in the "use" dialog references are replaced with the values they represent and those values are presented as read-only
(10) /commands are now integrated into the calculation of node values along with references
(11) /input command allows user input within a calculated node
(12) the system carries with it a "context" variable which knows things such as which node the reference is from, which namespace it is in and what the selected alias is, or what mini (in the case of the context menu for minis) the node was sent from.
(13) a single line user input to chat is interpreted as a node name if possible (with the alias context assumed to be a namespace) which means you can just type in eg "Search" and the appropriate node is sent to chat.
(14) .....

Ok .. I did not even know that feature existed. The feature was broken in my eyes, so I would rather not advance it. New character sheets for the Traipse Game Tree are awesome looking. The users will have a list of options to choose from and they can experience the software as a modernized GUI, not an outdated CLI (command line interface).



Go here for the update help: http://www.knowledgearcana.com//content/view/200/127/

Traipse Game Tree Features
(holy cow!! )

(1) Context sensitivity with Child and Parent References
(2) Can reference grid cells
(3) New # die roller prepend. Works like q only returns a number, not a quite roll.
(4) Removed the _atts attribute children that failed and where created everytime the software was started and saved everytime the software was closed.
(5) Height and Width attributes are now a tag
(6) New syntax for 'Tool' Sheets
(7) Fixes to code that prevented some Tool Sheets from opening
(8) Fixes to Tabbers that prevented them from opening with a double click correctly
(9) Anything in a Tabber enters design mode when the Tabber does
(10) EZ Tree One Touch Referencing System
(11) The map tag

I'm just picking out the finer details now. The Traipse tree doesn't have any need for Index or Index because all of the node references are context sensitive. Only when parents share names will there be a conflict, but I think an organized player is going to rename the top most node so they can easily recognize it with their eyes.

Using something like a namespace is possible with Traipse but I have to think about that. Do I want the entire game tree a memory resident dictionary or do I just want to use the processor and piece it out? Not sure yet.

Well a lot of that sounds like stuff that is not quite to do with the reference system... but anyway....

I tried looking for the instructions to get to alpha or beta:
http://www.knowledgearcana.com//content/view/200/127/



I don't have an option for alpha or beta on the small dialog that pops-up. Only the goblin and orc.

ah.. I hate this problem. Are you running on Vista? Did you use the .EXE file?

If you answered yes to both of these questions you might need to get the .ZIP file.

If not, how are you starting the software? Through a shortcut? Directly?