[Ohrrpgce] SVN: james/9958 load_plank_from_file() helper function

[James Paige]

On Saturday, January 13, 2018, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 13 January 2018 at 05:24, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
>
>> s/SliceLoadFromFile/load_plank_from_file/ in my previous mail
>>
>> Opps! ;)
>>
>
> Wait a minute, I just finally noticed you switched to my spelling, and
> have been doing it for a long time!
>
>

Haha! It's a "thing" now :)


>
>> On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 8:19 AM, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Opps! I'll fix where I forgot to free the collection in SliceLoadFromFile
>>> It looks like I am leaking the whole collection every time, even if the
>>> load succeeds.
>>>
>>
> Oh, I didn't even notice that bug! That wasn't what I meant.  The only way
> to check whether SliceLoadFromFile failed or not is to check if any slices
> were actually loaded... but if they didn't load, then the lookupslice will
> fail anyway, so that "if col = 0 then ..." does nothing
>
>
Oh! Right! I can fix that. The next check after that, for whether
sl_plank_holder was found is good enough on it's own.



>
>>> I'm looking forward to learning more about template slices and menu
>>> slices. I'll probably have to read your writeup before I understand :)
>>>
>>
> Hmm, this is a long and unfinished writeup, and at the top I have notes to
> myself to firsr finish and email, or in merge in two other writeups!
>
> Template slices is basically just hidden slices, ignored for almost all
> purposes (importantly, collision detection, so you can't click on them) but
> which are shown by default in the slice editor, tagged with [TEMPLATE].
> Their main use is to replace plank collections. If you want to add a new
> menu item to a plankmenu, just clone a template slice (indexed with a
> lookup code), instead of loading a collection and copying over the plank.
> Conceivably you could have multiple item templates. So, this will let you
> see the whole menu while you edit the menu slice collection.
> My branch: https://bitbucket.org/rbv/ohrrpgce/commits/d1963ff335e7afd8e
> 82d12dd1d92df3251b2f6e8?at=templates
> (This turned out a bit messy, I wanted to try to clean it up)
>
>
Okay, I follow. That seems like a good idea. I like it. I feel like I would
use it.



> As for the rest of it, let me just state this core crazy idea:
> Replace menu handles and menu item handles with menu slice handles and
> menu item slice handles.
>
> The "create menu" command would create *both* a new menu and a new menu
> slice, which appear to be exactly the same thing from the point of view of
> scripts. The handle it returns could be passed to any existing menu
> command, or used as a slice handle. Note that "create menu" fits the
> pattern for "create rect", "create text", etc.
> Having both menus and menu slices and making them different things with
> different kinds of handles, and adding commands to convert from one to the
> other, seems totally unnecessary and harmfully confusing. Three different
> handle types for heroes is endless trouble.
> Ditto for menu items: they also would become slices, but they would be
> different from other slice types in that they are always linked to a
> certain menu slice, must be a descendant of that slice, and can't be
> created independently. Typically they will have a single text slice child,
> and various existing menu and menu item command will have the effect of
> modifying that child.
> We could either merge MenuDef and plankmenu entirely at a low level, or at
> a higher one (so MenuDef builds on top of plankmenu or vice versa, or an
> abstraction layer over the two).
>
>

That sounds like a difficult plan! I am not opposed, just saying it sounds
hard.

I suppose having good unit tests for all the old menu scripting commands
will make it significantly easier. I know we have a bunch, I'll have to go
over them and see what is missing

If I understand correctly, the goal would be to re-implement menus as
plankmenu-style slices, and to make MenuDef a backcompat wrapper around
them. (Am I close?)



>
>>> ---
>>> James
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 8:04 AM, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 12 January 2018 at 13:00, <subversion at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> james
>>>>> 2018-01-11 16:00:45 -0800 (Thu, 11 Jan 2018)
>>>>> 38
>>>>> load_plank_from_file() helper function
>>>>> ---
>>>>> U   wip/plankmenu.bas
>>>>> U   wip/plankmenu.bi
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> + DIM col as Slice Ptr
>>>> + col = NewSliceOfType(slSpecial)
>>>> + SliceLoadFromFile col, filename
>>>> + IF col = 0 THEN visible_debug "load_plank_from_file: unable to load
>>>> slices from """ & filename & """": RETURN 0
>>>>
>>>> This doesn't work:  if SliceLoadFromFile fails, it doesn't delete col.
>>>>
>>>> I actually have a git branch where I was working on making
>>>> SliceLoadFromFile return a new slice instead of modify an existing one.
>>>> Which was a surprisingly large change. I don't remember why I didn't check
>>>> that in; maybe it didn't seem worth the effort to finish it.
>>>>
>>>> BTW, I have been working on changing the way that plankmenus work. I am
>>>> getting rid of "plank" collections and instead using template slices
>>>> parented directly to the menu slice collection. Oh... I didn't check in
>>>> template slices yet either? Well, it's basically just another Slice bit
>>>> which works very similarly to Slice.Visible. Well, after planks are gone
>>>> maybe plank menus should be renamed... I have a suggestion: Menu Slices. As
>>>> in, promote them to a new slice type so that they can be used by scripts
>>>> too, not just from FB. I have a long writeup about this which I haven't
>>>> finished yet...
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>
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