XML Editing
 

In EQ1 I was more comfortable editing the XML files using a text editor. I could keep the code clean and easy to read as well as have explicit control over the data I was working with (and yes dealing with typos to).

I've tried the same track with the EQ2 xml files and I'm finding them to be a complete mess, the type of mess you get when using a wysiwyg style editor that doesn't write clean code.

I'm not using Notepad to edit the source files. I'm using a program called Jext which works quite well to interpret all of the data that's been written into the file. I've found something that I'm curious about with these xml files and that is what appears to be some binary or non-writable data at the very beginning of each of the default files and even the modded files that I've downloaded.

These three bytes are the same for each file, or hex values, "EF BB BF". From my experience this looks like file corruption and should under most circumstances cause the xml to be badly formed.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Yeah.

They don't affect anything, so I ignore em.

I removed them from all of the xml files in my scratch folder and my custom ui folder and it didn't change anything functionally when I played. Guess I'll just leave it alone.

They define the format of text file. If you open one of the XMLs with WordPad (as opposed to NotePad) it'll screw up the format when you save if you didn't strip them out with NotePad (or a hex editor, etc.) beforehand.

Quib