Profit going forward
 

I need to get a sense of direction here, and I'm going to ask for input to help me decide. Now that Silat has quit EQ2, ProfitUI is left without an active maintainer. I like Profit a lot and I don't want to see it go away. I am not a coder, however, and not in a good place to learn enough on short notice to really take over maintenance myself. I am a good tester and admin, so I can take on serious work testing changes, pushing stuff to update servers, etc. I can also continue to answer questions in the forums up to the limit of my knowledge. Given that, here are my questions:

1. To anyone: do we want to keep Profit going? I like it a lot and I know it's still in pretty wide use. I've used Drums, but prefer Profit (not saying one is *better* than the other).

2. To anyone who has worked on Profit - how much can you help here? I'm including Silat in this question. I can handle most testing, as well as admin if I have what I need to push files to the updater.

If we can't muster the resources to keep Profit going, then so be it. I'll use it until it breaks and then think of something else.

I will help maintain it if no one else steps forward ....but not reliably. I'm sure my visits to the game and eq2interface forums will become less frequent as time goes by. But if I realize there is a problem, no one else fixes it, and I have the time to do so then I will.

Silat

That is as much as I could ask, so thank you. You know the code as well as anyone. so I was hoping you could help. Even if it no more than telling me what to look for in which file, it will help me keep things moving.

I would love for it to continue but I'm afraid I have no knowledge of coding at all.

I know XML pretty well from work, and I've gotten moderately familiar with the UI system. The main problem is time: when a patch comes out I can't start looking at it until I get home from work. But if someone can nail down the significant changes, I'm willing to take a stab at updating the XML to work.

Speaking of which, does anyone recall diffs for the recent change to add the YouTube video sharing to the sharing tab? Updating Profit for that'd be a good basic test for me, and having the diffs to the default UI would help me double-check that I found the right bits.

I made that change locally to all 3 variants. Here are the changed files for profit and you can compare them to get the idea if you would like.

Silat

OK, it looks like I got the XML read right. Mine varied a bit in the exact text, but I got the positioning right. I've attached what I wound up with, all variants. Next step, what's the exact process for getting them on the updater?

They need to be sent to kaldran to get posted to the updater. The file that I posted had the file structure to include in the zips for him. I will PM you with his email address.

Silat

As always, I am available for testing, and will always be active on Test and in betas. Silat can attest my usefulness there.

I would also like to know the drill for getting stuff packaged and sent to the updater so that I can handle that chore as needed. I don't mind if others want to do it, but I want to be sure that base is covered.

I'm delighted to see someone step up and help with the coding. :D

What I got from Silat last night is that it's basically e-mailing Kaldran a "profitui update.zip" file with a "profitui update" folder. Under that's the changelog.html file and a UI/ProfitUI tree containing only the new/changed files. That makes it easy to drop on top of a ProfitUI installation, so that's the format I'll use for test candidates. I'm not sure whether the exact "profitui update" folder and zipfile names matter, but I'm going to stick with them for convention and check with Kaldran about it.

Should I post update candidates in the ProfitUI forum, or PM them to you?

Nope. Those names don't matter. Just what I used this time. The structure does though ;) .

Silat

Release candidates can be posted here as long as they are clearly identified as such. That way, anyone who wants to get a bloody nose testing things can help out all they want to. More eyes are a good thing.

That's what I'll do, then. Thanks.

It does indeed, as I do not feel like crawling through subfolders just to find the correct files :P

Please make sure you always include all changed variants. There are also some control files for the updater/variants. They need to be updated if variants are added or files become obsolete.


I cancelled my account as well. Sitting around LFG for hours just to not find a group gets quite boring quite fast.
Their attitude on the deal with ProSieben did not help either.

Playing ME3 at the moment, and I guess I will have a look at Guild Wars 2 once it is released.

I plan to spend some time looking at the structure so I understand it, and that will include learning any control files. My goal is simply to insure that there is a reliable way to get updates to the updater, and to make things easier for the people who provide update hosting.

I'm sorry to see people leaving the game, but I understand the reasons.

I don't blame you. I grabbed the full download, it looks pretty straightforward. My plan's to prepare updater-ready zipfiles using ProfitUI as the top-level folder name unless you'd prefer the zipfile to actually start at the top level (ie. changelog.html and the UI folder are directly in the top level of the zipfile instead of being one level down in a folder).

I gather the softignore.xml file is for specifying files the updater shouldn't overwrite if they've been modified? And message.xml is a pop-up message I should leave alone unless there's a need to put a newer warning message up for users? And I'm going to assume never ever delete anything from obsolete.xml, only add files to it that need removed because they're no longer used.