Oolite Bulletins

I actually managed to produce a tool that checks integrity (basic check) of plist files in XML format, and cuts all the unneeded "garbage" out of it...


(still testing it before it meets the world).

Nice one. That WILL be useful!

Can't wait to see it.

For Mac OS it's called PlistEdit Pro (and I'm running its free trial version for over 750 days now; the only thing I have to endure since the expiry of the trial period is a 45 second countdown after I started the program; okay, perhaps after having made half a dozen OXPs or so and having fiddled with countless others I should consider spending $24,95 for it ).

Commander McLane wrote:

For Mac OS it's called PlistEdit Pro (and I'm running its free trial version for over 750 days now; the only thing I have to endure since the expiry of the trial period is a 45 second countdown after I started the program; okay, perhaps after having made half a dozen OXPs or so and having fiddled with countless others I should consider spending $24,95 for it :oops: ).

Y’know, Apple’s Property List Editor is free with your operating system – it’s part of the optional developer tools. (There are also two command line tools, plutil and PlistBuddy. plutil --lint will point out syntax errors in the property list – but then, so will Oolite’s log.)

Here's little update on the thing:

I've done so far:

- size reduction: as in removing all the trailing empty spaces, tabs, comments, etc, newlines.. all modular.
- formatting: I call it beautification. What it does is track the <dict> and <array> and adds tabs infront of them, making the structure obvious.
- crude error checking: not too precise, but indicative, and if it says "error found" then it is most definitely there.
- pretty much everything that handles and catalogs files.
- awareness of multiple oolite installs
- (I know this sounds minute, but I'm proud of it) tracking down where oolite is installed. For the kicks of it, I made it look for oolite shortcuts and use the links in them to locate oolite path.


I'm doing right now:
- dialog boxes. Damn buttons, and drop down thingies...

... and what I haven't done 'coz I did the above first:
- find a way to make updates online and seamless (long shot, but I'm looking into it)
- file checks: for missing texture files from both plists and dat files and missing meshes, sounds, js files, images...
- player ship checks: to determine if ships from shipyard.plist exist in shipdata.plist (an make the checks cross-oxp)
- find a sucker that will port the script to C or something and make it cross-platform, 'coz I'm making this in winbatch.

verify oxp?

Verify oxp?!

VERIFY OXP?!?!?!!

P.S. Does that answer your question?
A qoute for the day: There are no stupid questions. Only stupid answers.. or in this case ME.

P.P.S. Less things to do, yay!

Tell you what...

I'll look into using that feature directly from the script. If I could run Oolite to do the checking and logging only, it would be perfect.

.. right now I'm making ridiculously powerful subroutine that can strip 200000000 plists off their comments... (I'm not joking.. would probably take months to complete the stripping, but it can do that).

Thargoid wrote:

I'm not imagining it, and also perhaps comment on how you run it on Mac/Linux (although I would guess Linux will be similar, possibly with an extra - before -verify-oxp).

In order to use it under Mac OS X:
• Open Terminal (in Utilities in the Applications folder)
• Drag Oolite to the terminal window. The path to it should appear, followed by a space.
• Delete the trailing space, then type “Contents/MacOS/Oolite -verify-oxp ”
• Drag your OXP to the terminal window.
• Click in the terminal window, and press return.

(Note the space behind verify-oxp )

OK, here's little update on the thing:

I've included the OXP verify feature. It turns out to be extremely usable by the script I'm making.

Now one can simply select the oxp to verify and the log will pop out. (instead of typing the path and all that...)


I might just as well write a code to pharse the log and open the problematic file... (that will be added later on)

Right now I'm almost done with the "lite" version. I must say that it is growing really fast from simple trimming the tabs and stuff tool...

And it is ugly, but it delivers.


Expect the early beta within a day or two. (Edit: unless I get more ideas)



Edit:
Feel free to post suggestions on features... I just thought of few (Running Oolite temporarly with one selected OXP, editing settings, editing saves...nah.. I'm not pro-cheating)

Oops, I just made a minor change to -verify-oxp in trunk: nothing internal, but now when it's finished it pops a dos terminal in windows saying "Verify complete. Please see 'Logs\oxpname.log',Press any key...". Once you press any key, it closes that popup.

It shouldn't interfere with your parser, though...

If the window pops up, my script will shut it down immediately.

It might slow down batch-verifying, though.