Proposal: new format for keeping settings and uikeys

[koshi]

I was looking into writing a new uikyes editor and came across this: http://wxcode.sourceforge.net/components/keybinder/
Not only does it provide a cross-plattform way of grabbing key combos, but makes it also possible to store those (even in different profiles) in a plain text file via the wxFileConfig mechanism.

Possible structure (similar for settings file):

Code: Select all

nSelProfile=1
[keyprof0]
desc=Our primary keyprofile
name=Primary
action1=A dummy shortcut description|Ctrl+Shift+E
[keyprof1]
desc=Our primary keyprofile
name=Secondary
action1=A dummy shortcut description|Ctrl+h

Loading a shortcut would go something like this:

Code: Select all

commandString = ( Config->Load("keyprof0/action1","|DefaultCombo") ).AfterLast("|")

Benefits:
- only minor editing of wxKeybinder codebase gives suitable editor
- engine would only need one settings handler
- no more registry fiddling
- true per-user settings on linux, win, mac
- settings profiles in SpringSettings would be trivial to implement

Possible issues:
- the Keybinder seemingly has problems some keys (# + - on a german keyb)
- numpad keys result in strange chars
- engine would either need its own parser for the file or (better imo) depend on (or include) the neccessary wxWidgest sources

Side note: the neccesary libs are already in the win installer because SpringsSettings depends on them


IMO this should at least be pursued for the keeping of engine settings, because storing them in the registry on win is very user unfriendly.

Comments?

[BrainDamage]

the completely new parser wouldn't be needed since spring's TDF format is basically identical with sole difference that termination char is ";" in TDF and "\n" in the format you proposed (ini file)

[LordMatt]

Well, I have a very large uikeys.txt file that I would not like to have to remake by hand in a new setup, but other than that I don't see any downsides.

[koshi]

a little bash,sed,awk,regex magic could do the transformation for you
don't ask me though, i'm just throwing out buzz-words

as to the parser: the only thing that isn't changeable in the proposed format is the division in sections by [section/subsection] and the assignement of values with "option=value".

[Vadi]

If the only diff is ; and \n, then you can just do a regex search & replace in any text editor that supports it (I recommend Notepad++ on windows).

[Jonanin]

Sounds great, as long as it gets rid of the registry Will this add yet another dependency to Spring?

[koshi]

- engine would either need its own parser for the file or (better imo) depend on (or include) the neccessary wxWidgest sources

the completely new parser wouldn't be needed since spring's TDF format is basically identical with sole difference that termination char is ";" in TDF and "\n" in the format you proposed (ini file)

No, it doesn't need to depend on wxWidgets, but it could.

[Michilus_nimbus]

Why not use TDF for everything?
I think it's quite a nice format.

[AF]

tdf or lua, its a pain having to mess around with masses of different file formats as it is. lets try and minimize syntactic spewage.