Market Window Update and Optional Merchant Window
 

Attached is a very minor update to the Market Window.

This update moves the tabs forward due to them being hidden when using some skins such as Vangurk.

To the powers that be, please include this on the autoupdater. If you check you will see all that was changed is the layering of the tabs.

Also attached is a slightly modified Merchant window that displays the characters current status along the coin bar. I find it useful when purchasing status items from city merchants.

The marketplace window is signifigantly changed from the current one on the updater. Most of the changes are syntax related &quot instead of ' or running multiple lines together using 
 . These changes seem to make little or no difference in the execution of the file but they make doing a compare of the two files very difficult. What did you use to edit the file? was it UIbuilder?

Silat

Just a note that UIbuilder does not always get the syntax right when it converts it, not sure about the market window but at least the tradeskill window used to be broken if edited in UIbuilder.

Yes, I used the UIBuilder. The only change I made was to reorder the parts so the tabs were on top of the frame. That way if a player was using a skin with a solid title bar, the tabs rendered in front of the bar instead of behind it. I made no other changes.

It seems to work fine in my game, and the tabs display properly.

This still makes it impossible to do a UI compare on changes made by SoE in future updates.

I think most those that develope use an editor capable of saving the file without replacing non standard chars with garbage that can mess up the operation of scripts. Think its UTF-8 or something if I recall.

I myself use Notepad++ for editing xml code.

Also the Vangurk skin I do believe is nearly over 1.5 years old and theres been a lot of changes in the dds files since that skin was posted. I am sure you'll find things missing or not placed correctly when using that skin and that really has no bearing on Profit UI.

It's not garbage, UIbuilder writes valid XML (in UTF-8 encoding) and SOE's files are done in UIbuilder, too . The UI compare Silat meant was between current ProfitUI and the edited file. ;)

GM9 is right. I use a program called winmerge to do compares and when UIbuilder gets ahold of GM9's code for profit it makes the compare virtually impossible to automate. Also as he stated earlier in the thread, sometimes UI builder will break Profit code. I use notepad++ or dreamweaver for editing as they do not reorder elements in the tags nor do they change the encoding of characters.

Silat

Out of curiousity, is winmerge a better compare program than the one SOE provides along with UI builder? In my experience their provided program seems to work quite well for seeing what they change (which is often trivial things like localization tags, etc.)

WinMerge is also an editor. Also it's more convenient to use than SOE's command line tool. Personally I'm using Compare It! over WinMerge, but the latter has the advantage of being free.

So what do I need to change or do to prevent this from happening?

Also, I know Vangurk is an older skin, but it works just fine and everything shows up where it should. The only window that actually had an issue was the market window and the tabs rendering behind the title bar.

Winmerge is what I happened to be familiar with. I have never used sony's compare tool so cannot really tell you the differences between them. I picked up editing the UI from the standpoint of a webapp developer as that is where my knowledgebase lies. So the tools I use are adapted from what I use doing that work.

Silat

I avoid the UI builder because of the forum discussions about it altering code unnecessarilly. I generally avoid software that thinks it is smarter than me lol. As far as what to use, if you have experience with XML just use whatever plain text editor you like. As stated before notepad++ works well.

Silat

Sorry for the delay in responding/fixing this. Attached is the Market file with the fix, however I used my handy dandy PSPad which should preserve encoding.

Please let me know if this is correct.

Also regarding the optional Merchant window, was there any issues with that file?

I think the biggest thing is to not get too many authors updating files. This way if something breaks and one of them authors is no longer playing/updating it won't end up dead.

I know all the intentions are good but if theres a dozen people working on a project then its bound to run into some issues if someone did something that broke code and is no longer available.

I would say release your modified files as addons/optional as that way the default installation is always maintained by the updater.

I don't disagree with that, in this case the Market window is a fix for a bug for users using specific skin types. Since it doesn't change anything but the order of window elements, and it's a bug I know no one else is going to address, it would be nice to see it updated.