Universal Skin Format

**0l33l** · 01-31-2005, 03:34 AM

Originally Posted by zorro

Nope. It's easy in other languages as well if you use a proper tool like the MS-XML DOM 4.0. It's COM, so you can use it everywhere.

Sample to get a list of <RULE> tags in a document:

Code:

NodeList l_oNodes = l_oRoot.SelectNodes("descendant::RULE");

Mmmm.... And then it gets confusing...

I have this XML code for Delphi and I was staring at it on friday trying to figure out what the hell it meant

**Gobby** · 01-31-2005, 03:35 AM

Ol33l,

Was the control I sent you of any use??

**0l33l** · 01-31-2005, 03:38 AM

Originally Posted by UK_MP3Car

Ol33l,

Was the control I sent you of any use??

To tell you the truth, I haven't really had time to play around with it. Today I just got GammaControl to speak to Road Runner and started rewriting my Destinator3 code and converting it to Map Monkey code while throwing out the winsock. Now I'll actually be able to make loops that check for if a command was completed

**zorro** · 01-31-2005, 03:43 AM

Originally Posted by 0l33l

Mmmm.... And then it gets confusing...

I have this XML code for Delphi and I was staring at it on friday trying to figure out what the hell it meant

Basically this is the usage of a technique called "XPath". It parses through your XML document and returns you a list of all nodes (l_oNodes) found with the given tag name.
With that, you can step through each node and read such attributes as "ID" or determine whether this Node has child nodes or not.

Take a closer look in here:
http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/xpath_location.asp

**0l33l** · 01-31-2005, 12:11 PM

Originally Posted by zorro

Basically this is the usage of a technique called "XPath". It parses through your XML document and returns you a list of all nodes (l_oNodes) found with the given tag name.
With that, you can step through each node and read such attributes as "ID" or determine whether this Node has child nodes or not.

Take a closer look in here:
http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/xpath_location.asp

It sounds easy on paper but its hard to implement. I have some XML code, but still haven't fully figured out how to use it

**darkwingduck** · 01-31-2005, 12:29 PM

It sounds like a great idea to me. i have a frontend that i would love to be able to use skins in. but i fail to understand how they work code wise. Does anyone have vb / c# code that works with some of the skins allready released ?

**HybridMike** · 01-31-2005, 12:33 PM

I have a better Idea..... why dont we develop a universal skin building app, each front end developer contributes the portion of the code that would save that skin as their format. the program can have the same UI for building and use a plugin system that allows new front end programmers to build a plugin for the builder app...

then someone can open a skin file with the Builder app and save as.... (whatever front end you want)

Tell me if this sounds like a good idea

**zorro** · 01-31-2005, 12:34 PM

Originally Posted by 0l33l

It sounds easy on paper but its hard to implement. I have some XML code, but still haven't fully figured out how to use it

XML code is a string ... not more, not less

**0l33l** · 01-31-2005, 12:37 PM

Originally Posted by HybridMike

I have a better Idea..... why dont we develop a universal skin building app, each front end developer contributes the portion of the code that would save that skin as their format. the program can have the same UI for building and use a plugin system that allows new front end programmers to build a plugin for the builder app...

then someone can open a skin file with the Builder app and save as.... (whatever front end you want)

Tell me if this sounds like a good idea

Yeh, but its gonna be a problem with some guys writing in VB, Delphi, C#, VB.Net, etc.

Originally Posted by zorro

XML code is a string ... not more, not less

Yeh, yeh, yeh. Not as easy as it sounds

**brooksware2000** · 01-31-2005, 01:19 PM

Originally Posted by HybridMike

I have a better Idea..... why dont we develop a universal skin building app, each front end developer contributes the portion of the code that would save that skin as their format. the program can have the same UI for building and use a plugin system that allows new front end programmers to build a plugin for the builder app...

then someone can open a skin file with the Builder app and save as.... (whatever front end you want)

Tell me if this sounds like a good idea

This sounds more like what is needed. I doubt many of the frontend coders will want to totally rewrite their frontend to make it universal across the board. Now, a universal skin app--that sounds great.