Perfect ESF<->XML converter and revolution in ESF modding [Released!]

[ForteS]

Thanks taw it's now working to me, which program do you recommend to open the .xml?

[taw]

Thanks taw it's now working to me, which program do you recommend to open the .xml?

On Windows the best program I've found was Notepad++. Here's installer.

On Mac you should obviously use TextMate ;-)

More seriously - if anyone knows really good XML editor, do tell.
Notepad++ and TextMate are both good text editors, but XML is not 100% text,
there's a lot of structure in it.
I've tried a few "XML editors" but they all sucked hard. Or maybe I just don't know
how to use them. Recommendations welcome.

[.Mitch.]

Yep, just like you Taw, I spent most of yesterday night shouting at The Hedge Knight on Steam because all the Xml editors I found where terrible.

Notepad++ was quite good for a while, but hard to scroll through, and when closing a tree, it often crashed.

In the end I found Xml Notepad.

Its a real cheap and nasty program, but perfect for what I want it to do, and it never crashes, not even with a 150mb file.

You can also copy whole nodes, which hardly any of the others could. And thats one of the big things I needed it to do.

[alhoon]

I think I'll just wait for the spliced XMLs if that's OK. It's not that I'm in any rush.

[taw]

Big update for esf2xml - now it works with JRuby even with tiny amount of memory.

Even going as low as 100MB on ETW's startpos works just fine, something I wasn't expecting at all.
$ jruby -J-Xmx100m ./esf2xml esf/startpos.esf startpos.xml

So you don't have to bother with -J-Xmx any more.

For me startpos.esf conversion takes 70 seconds with JRuby, and 115 seconds with Ruby 1.8.7.

As far as I understand it was so slow for many people because of high memory use, so this should be fixed now.

[taw]

Yep, just like you Taw, I spent most of yesterday night shouting at The Hedge Knight on Steam because all the Xml editors I found where terrible.

By the way, if anyone wants to contact me with questions about software, I'm on google chat and msn as Tomasz.Wegrzanowski@gmail.com . I'm quite friendly when I'm not too busy.

[ForteS]

Yep, just like you Taw, I spent most of yesterday night shouting at The Hedge Knight on Steam because all the Xml editors I found where terrible.

Notepad++ was quite good for a while, but hard to scroll through, and when closing a tree, it often crashed.

In the end I found Xml Notepad.

Its a real cheap and nasty program, but perfect for what I want it to do, and it never crashes, not even with a 150mb file.

You can also copy whole nodes, which hardly any of the others could. And thats one of the big things I needed it to do.

Herm... it isn't free?

[taw]

Herm... it isn't free?

Download link is right there, it seems free enough, not?

[ForteS]

Download link is right there, it seems free enough, not?

Yes, but he said "Its a real cheap"(...) not that it was free. Anyway never mind.

[.Mitch.]

I mean that the program looks very cheap, as in it was made with a small budget.

I would bet that most casual users wouldn't find it useful, as the tree view is at best complex and hard to find things.

Anyone with expeierice using the old esf editor will find XMLnotepad great because the nodes are in the same order, so if you for example see the diplomacy node, you know whats below it etc.

[ForteS]

Strange it doesn't work for me

[taw]

Hi there, xml2esf works on JRuby now. Feel free to test it on Windows regular Ruby.
You might need to do this first with either of them: gem install nokogiri
(or jgem install nokogiri for JRuby iirc).

Also slow as hell (startpos 4 minutes JRuby, 5 minutes Ruby 1.8.7) and lacks progress bar.
It is strongly recommended that you play with some small xml like regions.xml first,
before trying it on startpos.xml
Not like startpos.xml is useful much without XML splitting yet inside anyway.

Coming next, I want to merge these from old version:

• XML splitting
• getting rid of most of redundant version="1" crap etc.
• Performance fixes
• bitmap exports
• more semantic xml

Code for all of these is ready, it just needs. I expect most of these to be ready by tomorrow evening.

I'd ask for someone to write a tutorial, but interface will change with XML splitting anyway, so it's probably better to wait for tomorrow with it.

[.Mitch.]

I'll be happy to write a tutorial. I'll also be happy to help with any testing.

This tool is going to save me god knows how many hours.

[Peteriscoolz]

It's says released though Where do I download it?

[taw]

It's says realesed though Where do I download it?

It's in etwng repository.

[Peteriscoolz]

It's in etwng repository.

Thank you !

[alhoon]

I'll be happy to write a tutorial. I'll also be happy to help with any testing.

I'll be happy if you write a tutorial!

+ rep just because you may some day write a tutorial. I can't rep Taw yet, but I'll again, soon.

Just a question:
The smaller XML would be small enough to open with wordpad or notepad?

[The Hedge Knight]

Awesome news Taw, im going to have to nominate you for opifex soon if you keep all this awesome work up XD.

[ForteS]

Just a question:
The smaller XML would be small enough to open with wordpad or notepad?

I've been able to open it with both but in my opinion it's impossible to work with them

[.Mitch.]

Its most definatly not.

As I'v been working with them for some time now.

In Notepad++ dont use the scroll features use the search function. (If you dont know what to search for, you shouldnt be editting the xmls anyway in all honesty)

If you use a Xml editor, then just use the tree's and it take away alot of the hastle.