Re: [sfbol-planning] SSD format

[<sfb...@cy...>]

On Wed, 19 Sep 2001, Devlyn Davis wrote:

> I've been looking into the XML tools you mentioned. 
> Merlot seems to be the best choice because it is free
> :)  My editor of choice for Linux is Vi, and since ViM
> seems to be a clone of Vi, that would seem to work
> also.  I do agree, however, that a graphical tool for
> data entry would probably be the best bet.

Do you use Linux alot?  I don't run anything else at home.

> 
> On a similar topic, is there any current thought on
> how the SSD's will be displayed in the game.  Will
> they look like the paper SSD's?  i.e., will there be a
> graphical representation of the ship that shows all of
> it's systems and shows which systems have been
> destroyed?  Also, will the charts that are on the
> SSD's (weapon charts, movement charts, etc.) be
> displayed?  Part of the reason I'm asking is to find
> out if the end result will have any bearing on how we
> gather the data and how much data to gather from the
> SSD's.  

I definitely think there should be a graphical representation.  I don't know about the charts.  Probably should, just for familiarity.  

2 possibilites occurred to me for the graphic.  One was to use SVG (scalable vector graphics, I believe.  It's an XML derivitive).  The description of how to draw the image is stored in a file and we would have a process to convert the SVG to a graphic format to display.  

The second would be to just have scanned in images and display them.  

The biggest issue with both is how to mark the boxes destroyed.  Seems to me you'd need to know the x,y coords of the box and the size in order to color it on the scanned images.  One advantage that the SVG has is that since it is rendered, it would be easy to modify the SVG file to tell it to render that box a different color.  The disadvantage (and this seems like a big one to me) is that you'd have to have some way of creating the SVG file initially.  I don't know what kind of tools are out there to translate a graphic into SVG format, or if someone would have to do it from scratch for each SSD.

But for the scanned image, someone would have to find out the x,y coords and sizes of the boxes and their names.

Any other ideas would be welcome.  Dev,  I believe you had mentioned something about a demo someone else had done that generated the SSD's.  Maybe they had something workable.

Aaron