XML and Scripting, the balance of power and simplicity

[punt]

I don't know if anyone has played around with WoW's ability for UI customization, but it is pretty impressive. With just XML, and the LUA ( http://www.lua.org/ ) Scripting language, one has a lot of flexibility, but still a managable amount of simplicity.

A perfect example of where the newer tools, clients, and possibly even emu's should consider going.


Not sure if the masses are playing WoW, but a project focussed to wow UI's may be fun (yes, I know they exist).

[xir]

It is very nice. I used FlexBar in WoW it was great for custom buttons (size, shape, position etc). The scripting UI engine also allows one to do some less than ethical tasks too

[Sydius]

I like Lua a lot (in fact, I am going to a Lua convention this month), but hate XML.

It is not so much a bad idea to use XML from a technical perspective, but I hate all those greater and less-than symbols – they all seem so unnecessary.

I really like the idea of allowing sub-categories etc. and properties like XML, but having a much cleaner C-ish look:

Window MainWindow {
Width 100px
Height 100px
Button someButton {
Text “blah”
}
}

Etc…

Just a personal nit-picking, I guess, but Ogre (a 3D engine I used for a while) uses that style, but CGUI (a GUI toolkit Ogre used) used XML, and I found the XML so much of a hassle in comparison that I ended up writing my own parser to over-ride it.

[lingo]

Yeah, I don't like XML either. But there is so many tool and so many clever hack with XML, you just have to like XML for what it can do.

Case in point http://www.gamedev.net/reference/progra ... s/xmltech/, that is one amazing idea.

If uox3 want to use XML, I would suggest TinyXML, easy to use, and very easy to integrated.