[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Graphic resource editor, and an architecture proposal

["Eric S. Raymond" <esr@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Per I. Mathisen <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> I don't see any attachments...

My error.  I'll send it today, after I make the change to burst the artists
attribute into an artists metadata file.
 
> This should have been documented somewhere, though. Perhaps someone should
> write a general modpack README.

If my architecture change is approved, one of the things I will deliver 
along with my patch is a tile-editing HOWTO.
 
> > <para>The aggregate of all FreeCiv data files is functionally similar
> > to a Windows registry, and even uses a syntax resembling the textual
> > portions of registries.But the creep and corruption problems we
> > noted with the Windows registry don't crop up here because no program
> > (either within or outside the FreeCiv suite)
> > <emphasis>writes</emphasis> to these files.It's a read-only
> > registry edited only by the game's maintainers.</para>
> 
> I don't know if that is relevant, but savegames are also registry files,
> and they are written by freeciv.

That is indeed relevant.
 
> > FIRST PROPOSED CHANGE: Replace the tile-array files with directories,
> > one for each array, with the tiles as named files beneath them. Nuke
> > all the tile-coordinate crap in the specfiles.
> 
> I agree. This would make it a lot easier to add stuff.

You like it.  Dorje likes it, with reservations about backward compatibility
which I have already addressed.  Paul says it's "exciting".  Should I take
this as direction to produce a patch?
 
> > SECOND PROPOSED CHANGE: Consolidate all the tileset-specific graphics
> > into one directory called 'graphics'. All image lookup calls dive
> > into this directory. Hierarchy beneath it goes
> > <role>/<type>/<size>/<style>.
> ...
> > 2. Looking up a flag by nation and preferred size: ("flag", "usa",
> > "30x30", "engels"). Look under graphics/flag/usa.  See that there
> > are two directories,26x20 and 30x21.Aha!  That's a size.  By
> > least-squares metric the closest match is 30x21.Look for "usa"
> > under there. See a file.  Return it.
> 
> Don't agree. I think it makes more sense to standardize on a certain size,
> at least for flags and misc images.

I must disagree.  We can't count on either screen size or resolution 
remaining constant.  Therefore, unless we're going to move graphics 
to a scalable vector format and have the client auto-resize them, we
need to be able to support multiple sizes.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>