Terminal editing

[Drictelt]

There seems to be a lack of documentation about terminal editors. I've been looking around and haven't found anything else than a guide for an older version of hex. Also terminal editors are missing in the Utilities page of the marawiki. So I'm asking my questions here:

1) Is there a (pseudo-)wysiwyg terminal editor other than Hex?
2) Can Hex open unmerged files? It says "blah blah mac OS error; result code = -50" when I try to.
3) If the answer for 2) is no, does that mean that one can only add terminals with hex after merging?

[treellama]

There seems to be a lack of documentation about terminal editors. I've been looking around and haven't found anything else than a guide for an older version of hex. Also terminal editors are missing in the Utilities page of the marawiki. So I'm asking my questions here:

1) Is there a (pseudo-)wysiwyg terminal editor other than Hex?
2) Can Hex open unmerged files? It says "blah blah mac OS error; result code = -50" when I try to.
3) If the answer for 2) is no, does that mean that one can only add terminals with hex after merging?

The tags are listed in the Forge manual--and a couple extras that Atque supports in its manual. Those are about the best resources.

I'm aware of no capable WYSIWYG terminal editor outside of Hex. Hex can't open (as far as I know) unmerged terminals. I believe you should be able to write terminal scripts with Hex and save them as text files for merging with Forge or Atque, but i haven't tried it.

The best terminal editor is plain old SimpleText! It's not difficult to write terminal scripts by hand.

[Drictelt]

I don't see any text-file-exporting function in Hex. Indeed, simpletext should do...

[irons]

#STATIC

[Drictelt]

Meh, indentation seems to be forbidden

[tehWastedJamacan]

so forge doesn't have a built in terminal creator? boy am i behind.

[irons]

You might have confused Forge with Pfhorge, because Pfhorge does have a terminal editor. Forge can merge levels with terminal scripts. Which is how I would do it anyway. Drictelt, are you trying to indent for formatting purposes when the player reads the terminal, or are you going for HTML/etc. indenting?

[RyokoTK]

Hex allows you to save its own files, but I believe you can open them in simpletext and they'll work fine.

[Pfhorrest]

Hex saves its own terminal texts in a format that Forge will merge.

However, it doesn't seem happy to open all terminal text files you throw at it. I suspect this may be a resource fork thing, i.e. Hex creates data and resource forks of its text, but only *reads* the resource forks, so a term script created with something other than ol' SimpleText or the like (which likewise writes to both forks) will read as blank to Hex. But so long as you use Hex, Hex, and only Hex, so there's no worries about compatibility, it is still the best terminal editor IMO.

There is also Cranberry, which is able to edit terminal texts as well as MML, although I've noticed that its alignment isn't as true to how Marathon renders things as Hex is. There are also some issues with compatibility there IIRC, but that might have been Hex's fault and not Cranberry's.

[tehWastedJamacan]

You might have confused Forge with Pfhorge, because Pfhorge does have a terminal editor. Forge can merge levels with terminal scripts. Which is how I would do it anyway. Drictelt, are you trying to indent for formatting purposes when the player reads the terminal, or are you going for HTML/etc. indenting?

No, I thought that forge was like obed with teh terminals...

[Drictelt]

Are you trying to indent for formatting purposes when the player reads the terminal, or are you going for HTML/etc. indenting?

I was doing things like

Code: Select all

#TERMINAL 0
  #UNFINISHED
    #LOGON 128
    #INFORMATION
      terminal text
...

Hex allows you to save its own files, but I believe you can open them in simpletext and they'll work fine.

Is there a newer version than 1.0.4 or am I missing something?

[irons]

Syntactic indenting or whatever you might call it definitely won't work in plain-text terminal files. I wouldn't worry too much because there's not much nesting in terminal stuff. You can put comments into the terminal files and/or separate things with arbitrary carriage returns. I wonder now if it would be possible to write XSL to transform some kind of terminal markup language to actual terminal scripts.

[riserobotrise]

Syntactic indenting or whatever you might call it definitely won't work in plain-text terminal files. I wouldn't worry too much because there's not much nesting in terminal stuff. You can put comments into the terminal files and/or separate things with arbitrary carriage returns. I wonder now if it would be possible to write XSL to transform some kind of terminal markup language to actual terminal scripts.

I hate to bring up an old thread but is there a way to use escape characters in the marathon terminal editing so that certain characters seen by the terminal such as $i will show up as $i rather than italicizing the font?

[irons]

Use something like $$I$ii. Basically, you have to split the $i (or whatever letter you want to print) with a "tag" style formatting command; $U/$u, $B/$b, and so on. I ran a quick test and the first example worked fine.

[riserobotrise]

Use something like $$I$ii. Basically, you have to split the $i (or whatever letter you want to print) with a "tag" style formatting command; $U/$u, $B/$b, and so on. I ran a quick test and the first example worked fine.

hmm, didn't seem to work I want it to show this:

$U2$u

so I tried $$U2$$u but instead it just shows the dollar sign followed by the rest of the text being underlined. so it looks like this $2$$u and the rest of the text is underlined like this.

[irons]

hmm, didn't seem to work I want it to show this:

$U2$u

so I tried $$U2$$u but instead it just shows the dollar sign followed by the rest of the text being underlined. so it looks like this $2$$u and the rest of the text is underlined like this.

If you want the terminal to read literally "blah blah blah $U2$u blah blah blah" which is to say with NO formatting whatsoever in that string, you need to put "blah blah blah $$U$uU2$$U$uu blah blah blah" in the raw terminal text file. This example might make more sense if we use a format sequence other than underline. For example, you could use "blah blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah" to create the same effect in the rendered terminal. The point is that you need to put a format and an unformat command between the $ character and the letter that would normally be interpreted as a format command. Try my examples above to see of that's what you want.

[Wrkncacnter]

$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blahblah blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah $$I$i$iu
blah blah blah bblah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah bblah blah bla blah
blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu bla blah blah bllah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah bl blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iu b blah blahah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah
bl blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blahh blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah
blah blahh blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blahblah blah $$I$i$iU2$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah b $$I$iU2$$I$iu b
blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah
bl$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah ah blah blahblah blah
blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah$$I$iU2$$I$iu blahblah blaah blah blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blaah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah blahblah blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah
blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu
blah blah blahh blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah$$I$iU2$$I$iu blablah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu bah blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu
blah blah bah blah blah bh blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu bh blah blah blah
blah$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah$I$iU2$$I$iu blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah
blah blah blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah $I$iU2$$I$iu blah
$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blahblah blah blahh $$I$iU2$$I$iu blahah blah
blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blaah $$I$i$iU2$$I$iU2$$I$iU2$$Iu blah blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah blah blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iU2$$I$iuI$iU2$$I$iuI$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iu bh $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah bh blah bla$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah
blabla $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah bla blah blah ah blah blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah ah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blah blah blah blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah ah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah
blah blahah blah blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah bl $$I$iU2$$I$iu
blah blah bl blI$iU2$$I$iu blah blah blI$iU2$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah
blahblah blah blah blahblah blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu bl$$I$iU2$$I$iu
blah blah bl$$I$iU2$$I$iU2$$I$iU2$$I$iU2$$I$iu bla$I$iU2$$I$iu blah
blah bla$I$iU2$$I$iu blah bh blah blah $$I$iU2$$I$iu bh b blah blah
$$I$iU2$$I$iu blah blah b

[riserobotrise]

"blah blah blah $$U$uU2$$U$uu blah blah blah"

Interesting. I tried the $$U$uU combination to see if it would stop underlining, but apparently it doesn't work. From what I understand the $U is there to start underlining, and the $u should stop it. For some reason the program isn't registering the $u command to initialize cease underlining text. The result looks like this "$$uU BLAH BLAH BLAH ..." while it should look like this "$U BLAH BLAH BLAH ..." I don't know why this would be. I'm going to see if there is a wisiwig editor that works for OS 10 on intel machines so I can properly instantiate the text that I want. Someone suggested cranberry, so that is what I'll use.

well thank you, maybe if you have any further ideas, I'm all ears.

** edited...

hmmm, cranberry makes dollar signs($) disappear! ugh, I guess I can't win :`(

[irons]

Ok. I wasn't near my computer when I came up with the last example, eloquently quoted by gentle W'rkncacnter. Did you try the example that worked for me? The first one, that is.

[riserobotrise]

wow, the $I$i combo worked a lot better!!! I don't know why the program would ignore a $u to shut out the underline but not a $i, thanks for the help!

[irons]

No problem.

[treellama]

hmm, didn't seem to work I want it to show this:

$U2$u

so I tried $$U2$$u but instead it just shows the dollar sign followed by the rest of the text being underlined. so it looks like this $2$$u and the rest of the text is underlined like this.

Are you using Atque? I think you found a bug!

[riserobotrise]

Are you using Atque? I think you found a bug!

yeah, I was using Atque to merge the maps.