The Libraries mess

[Cholmondely]

We have

OXPs

•Library OXP: by BlackWolf & Svengali: collections of snippets to help other OXPs
•Cabal Common Library by Cheyd, PhantorGorth & Svengali: collections of snippets to help other OXPs
•Ships Library OXP: by Cim (with a half-dozen library books)
•Technical Reference Library: by Spara: Common ships with their attributes

In Game

•Initial Game Start Up Screen: View Ship Library
F4/4 Ship/Station Interface: All under Ship Systems:
•Ship’s Library (from cim’s Ship's Library OXP)
•View ship specifications (identical to Ship Library on Start-up screen);
•Gallery of all objects (from Norby's Gallery OXP)
•Gallery of encounters (from Norby's Gallery OXP)
•Ship comparisons (from Phkb's Ship Comparison OXP)

I've included the last three because - to my untutored eye - they seem a tad similar to the View Ship Library in the Initial Game start up screen (if that is what it's called!).

_____________________________________________________________________

*Most important: Am I missing any others?

*And what is that first game screen called?
*And is the Ship's Library appearing there part of the vanilla game?
*And what is a GUI supposed to be?

[Cmdr James]

Imnot 100% sure what exactly you are getting at, but I think we may be confusing different meanings of library.

A ships library is a piece of ingame stuff, a room or shelf of books that you can entertain yourself with on the long and lonely travels in the spacelanes.

A Library in the technical sense, is reusable code that people writing OXPs can use. That is to say instead of everyone writing a javascript method to land on a planet, one person does so and everyone uses that. You may know similar concepts such as .jar .dll and so on.

I am pretty sure that Ships Library is not in the vanilla game.

A GUI is a Graphical User Interface, think something like the F4 screen

[Cholmondely]

I'm not 100% sure what exactly you are getting at, but I think we may be confusing different meanings of library.

A ships library is a piece of ingame stuff, a room or shelf of books that you can entertain yourself with on the long and lonely travels in the spacelanes.

A Library in the technical sense, is reusable code that people writing OXPs can use. That is to say instead of everyone writing a javascript method to land on a planet, one person does so and everyone uses that. You may know similar concepts such as .jar .dll and so on.

I am pretty sure that Ships Library is not in the vanilla game.

A GUI is a Graphical User Interface, think something like the F4 screen

Ahaah! Thank you. Very helpful! A little clarity in the murkiness of the growing gruesomeness of ghastly gubbins!
Does that mean that BGS is also a library? And do Cabal Common Library OXP and Library OXP duplicate each other? I note that CCL is ?deprecated. But I also noted when loading up on .oxp's that several of them needed it.

Still looking for answers to the points:

*Most important: Am I missing any other items called Library? (I've not yet tried every single .oxp that exists)

*What is that first game screen called? The one that then leads to

• Start New Commander
• Load Commander
• View Ship Library
• Game Options
• Manage Expansion Packs
• Exit Game

*And is the Ship's Library appearing there part of the vanilla game?

I 'm hoping to write a disambiguation page or section for our wiki, and need all the information first! I have yet to be initiated into the dark arts of JS/Python/C/C+/C++ etc: I think they used to call it grammarie in the Middle Ages, you know, the sort of stuff that the Merton Calculators got up to ... hence the joys of wittering on about semi-colons and brackets for apples

[Cody]

... the murkiness of the growing gruesomeness of ghastly gubbins!

<chortles> Sounds like Lockdown!

[phkb]

*What is that first game screen called?

The "Main menu"

*And is the Ship's Library appearing there part of the vanilla game?

Yes.

[phkb]

Does that mean that BGS is also a library?

Not really. It provides background images (which BGS, Xenon UI and Library refer to as a "GUI"), sound effects, enhanced warp shaders, that sort of thing. It's not really providing any external interfaces designed for other OXP's to make use of. Library GUI facilitates the smooth integration of OXP's like BGS and Xenon UI, enabling them to be installed side-by-side successfully.

And do Cabal Common Library OXP and Library OXP duplicate each other?

Somewhat. There are cross-over elements, but it's not a one-for-one translation. For instance, Library also has elements of OXP Config, which CCL doesn't.

I note that CCL is ?deprecated. But I also noted when loading up on .oxp's that several of them needed it.

Those will be older OXP's that have not had the update/refresh treatment yet.

[Cmdr James]

*What is that first game screen called?

The "Main menu"

In the source code, they are refered to as demo ships and it is described as demo screen. See Universe.m

FWIW there is also (internally) a ship registry which is the set of installed ships. In the code itself shiplibrary as far as I can tell is the plist which contains the configuration of all core ships which is read into the registry at the point oolite starts.

[phkb]

In the source code, they are refered to as demo ships and it is described as demo screen. See Universe.m

the source code labels things in a way that makes sense to the source code, which may or may not line up with what things should be called by the player.

[Cody]

the source code labels things in a way that makes sense to the source code

The source code is sentient? That'd explain a few things!