And...ummm... if all the data files are in a standard XML format and since the doc-type would have to be public, I predict that we would see a reverse engineered EV engine for other platforms.
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My signature is short and unobtrusive. I don't have a long sig to overcompansate for "ego" problems.
Speaking of which, I ask the fatal question:
Since Ambrosia has categorically stated that they WILL have PC programs in the future, is this a possibility for EV3? Just wondering (I use a mac. No emulation for me).
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"Apple does not recommend allowing an elephant to operate a Mac in any environment."
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Originally posted by Matrix:
**I personally don't know about XML and don't know where to find out about it. Also I agree about it thought ResEdit is a serious pain in the *** I can't stand it.
**
(url="http://"http://www.w3.org/XML/")http://www.w3.org/XML/(/url) -- W3's own stuff. These are the technical documents, not an easy, guided tutorial. I'm not being condescending, but no one on the boards likely will find a good use for XML unless EV moves over to an XML plugin format. Unless you're developing web sites with some serious backend punch (in other words, if you can understand "$issueRow = mysql_fetch_row($issues)", XMLmight do ya' some good)
Until then, learn to write good HTML and banish those $^%^$&%(*@! WYSIWYG editors. There's a time and place for everything. It's like a pilot only knowing how to use the autopilot, got it? Does alright till all hell breaks loose... the pilot that can actually fly takes over and doesn't kill anyone. The pilot that can't... well... ya' know.
Learn to write good, clean code from Zeldman. (url="http://"http://www.zeldman.com/askdrweb/index.html")http://www.zeldman.c...rweb/index.html(/url) I'll prolly get slapped for this but, shameless plug, (url="http://"http://www.philpritchett.com/heritageWay/")http://www.philpritc...om/heritageWay/(/url) is a tie-in site i did for a recent client. album artwork, t-shirts, posters, other merch., etc. and the web site. why am i mentioning this? That's 100% by-the-standards HTML and CSS. The only hack is a single pixel gif needed to work around a CSS problem in Netscape, mainly Netcape not recognizing that some elements were instantiated off-screen and neglecting to realise that, yes, we need to have a scroll bar.
Yea, I've been writing HTML since I was... eek... 13 and I'm now 20, but you can learn how to write good HTML. Writing good HTML is like building a good fence. A bad fence will look like crap, fall over, and become a nuisance to the community. A good fence will look great, not fall over, and function as exptect for the community. Same thing.
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My signature is short and unobtrusive. I don't have a long sig to overcompansate for "ego" problems.
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Originally posted by WickedDyno:
**Let's have a XML-based syntax for data files, and have the images as standard files... Put them in a bundle or an archive. It'll be much eaiser than futzing with ResEdit. Much more extensible, too.
**
Sounds like a nice idea. You should implement that when you write your own game. 
mcb
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Matt Burch
(url="http://"mailto:mburch@ambrosiasw.com")mailto:mburch@ambrosiasw.com(/url)mburch@ambrosiasw.com
BAH. DThat's so STUPID. Okay, first off YES, OS X will use resource forks.... How the hll is it supposed to run standard Mac programs without it? DUH. Second off, if you find ResEdit too difficult for editing plugs, you shouldn't be making one.
This really sounds like another stupid idea from the people who want a PC version of EV.
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W E B T E R R O R I S M !!
The lifestyle of the poor and infamous!!!
Resource forks are deprecated. How old are you? Really. Were you using a Mac in 1993 when the first PowerPCs came out? At the time we saw a massive shift to to fat binary, containing both the PPC and 68k code. As time has progressed, fat binaries have become less and less common in commercial apps, and to a lesser extent in shareware, with PPC binaries being the only option in many cases.
We'll see something similar with MacOS X as more and more apps are written natively for MacOS X.
And, iirc, MacOS X does not handle resource forks like classic. If your root partition is non-HFS+, it splits the file into a data fork file and a resource fork file and puts the two files into a package. This is cool because it means that (finally) Mac files won't care if they're on a unifork filing system. Copy the file back to an HFS+ volume, and the two files are merged. Ergh... about a month or so ago, there was a link off /. to a whitepaper written by one of Apple's upper-echelon software engineers describing the problems of merging MacOS X's FreeBSD posix nature with the classic beast that we all know and love. Good stuff.
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Originally posted by Tern-WEBTERRORISM:
**BAH. DThat's so STUPID. Okay, first off YES, OS X will use resource forks.... How the hll is it supposed to run standard Mac programs without it? DUH. Second off, if you find ResEdit too difficult for editing plugs, you shouldn't be making one.
This really sounds like another stupid idea from the people who want a PC version of EV.
**
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My signature is short and unobtrusive. I don't have a long sig to overcompansate for "ego" problems.
On the first point - resource forks are NOT depreciated - unless you're using an app that uses dynamically create windows (read: slow and easy to make mistakes in) or PowerPlant (Quite good, has some bugs) you'll have some WIND resources. There will probably be MENU resources, PICT, snd ,STR ,STR# etc. It's much easier to place stuff like that in resources than hard coding a-la windows. OS X Still has resources in the same implemention as 9 and below - as tern stated otherwise clasic apps would not work.
On the second - afaik your root partition must be HFS+, though maybe AU/X may work. And if you've ever copied to a windows disk you'll know that MacOS already handles unifork systems perfectly.
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--blackhole
(url="http://"mailto:blackhole@mac.com")mailto:blackhole@mac.com(/url)blackhole@mac.com
Check your dictionary. deprecated =! obsolete. Something which has been deprecated was once okay, has been replaced by a more preferable method, but still works. Obsoleted is no longer works, no longer supported.
There's an RFC which deals with the terms used in RFCs. Can't remember what number, but of course I do have the (url="http://"http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2795.html")IMPS(/url) RFC bookmarked.
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Originally posted by blackhole:
**On the first point - resource forks are NOT depreciated ...
**
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My signature is short and unobtrusive. I don't have a long sig to overcompansate for "ego" problems.
Quote
Originally posted by foo12:
**Check your dictionary. deprecated =! obsolete. Something which has been deprecated was once okay, has been replaced by a more preferable method, but still works. Obsoleted is no longer works, no longer supported.
There's an RFC which deals with the terms used in RFCs. Can't remember what number, but of course I do have the IMPS RFC bookmarked.
**
I suggest you re-read my post. Depreciation of a feature leads to it being obsolete. Resource forks are the best way of dealing with the problems that the currently solve. They are not depreciated - not even in OS X.
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--blackhole
(url="http://"mailto:blackhole@mac.com")mailto:blackhole@mac.com(/url)blackhole@mac.com
Quote
Originally posted by blackhole:
**I suggest you re-read my post. Depreciation of a feature leads to it being obsolete. Resource forks are the best way of dealing with the problems that the currently solve. They are not depreciated - not even in OS X.
**
I know what you meant, but it's just that I've read differently. (url="http://"http://www.mit.edu/people/wsanchez/papers/USENIX_2000/")http://www.mit.edu/p...rs/USENIX_2000/(/url)
And deprecation isn't instant obsoletion; it's a step towards obsoletion, but it still works like expected. (I'm going off what i've read from the pertinent RFCs that the W3C includes in standards declartions. definitions of the exact meanings of "should", "compliant agent", etc.)
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My signature is short and unobtrusive. I don't have a long sig to overcompansate for "ego" problems.
Some of you are starting to sound a little absurd. "If you don't know how to code by hand, you should.". Just because some people find writing in bare bones HTML easier and faster than using a "whizzy-wig" editor doesn't mean that everyone should code by hand. Some people have a steep learning curve and just don't understand it, no matter how hard they try. Some people don't have time to learn how to code.
If you can write XML / HTML / XHTML / CGI / PERL / C++ / C+ / BASIC / JAVA / (insert complex programming language here), good for you. But some people just can't.
But I don't have that problem. I've been making clean web pages since I was 10.
It seems like one of the ways that coding with ResEdit would be MUCH more, um, enjoyable, would be if, instead of having to enter in the ID number of some irreverent system, and having to remember crazy ID combinations, you could just choose from a pop-up menu.
For example: Instead of answering 18935 to field ReturnStellar, you could just choose | Stellar of this gov |, | Pirates |.
Like EV-Edit, without the bugs and the annoying dialog boxes.
(This message has been edited by Zacha K (edited 08-17-2000).)
Quote
Originally posted by Zacha K:
**Some of you are starting to sound a little absurd. "If you don't know how to code by hand, you should.". Just because some people find writing in bare bones HTML easier and faster than using a "whizzy-wig" editor doesn't mean that everyone should code by hand. Some people have a steep learning curve and just don't understand it, no matter how hard they try. Some people don't have time to learn how to code.
**
Just pointing out that, if you know how to hand code, you'll gain a better sense of intuition about what works and what does not. Even Dreamweaver does some nasty stuff that needs to be fixed by hand, and that takes an understanding of HTML.
If you just can't get it, fine---but at least try. It's a valuable skill to have. (Then again, this is coming from someone who can fix postscript errors by hand.)
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My signature is short and unobtrusive. I don't have a long sig to overcompansate for "ego" problems.
Sigh. Ok, looks like it's too late, since MB has already written a lot of the game.
I'm glad I stirred up some interest in the subject, though.
Here's what XML is -- it's a lot like HTML, with tags and elements -- but the tags can be anything.
Here's what it could concievably look like (() = <> 
(!DOCTYPE "EV3ML 1.0" "http://www.ambrosiaSW.com/foo/bar/ev3ml.dtd")
(ev3ml)
(header)
(**** value="Escape Velocity 3 ship data" /)
(/header)
(data)
(ship name="Verwirrchung")
(index value="0" /)
(parameters)
(cargo capacity="35" expansion="false" /)
(shield strength="40" repair="12" /)
(armor strength="15" repair="2" /)
(fuel capacity="500" hyperspace="true" boosters="allowed" /)
(accleration value="120" usefuel="false" /)
(topspeed value="300" friction="false" /)
(turnrate value="2" /)
(space type="normal" value="15" /)
(space type="gun" offset="20,0" name="Nose Gun" /)
(space type="gun" offset="0,30" name="Left Gun" /)
(space type="gun" offset="0,-30" name="Right Gun" /)
(space type="turret" offset="0,0" name="Turret" /)
Etc. You get the idea. The benefit of this is that it allows arbitrary lengths of elements, which ResEdit does not. It also makes adding data easier. Also, the use of plain english words simplifies remembering the language.
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Because it's there,
MotherF----r
