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[sphr]

@sphr: There are some legit reasons why you'd want to know the offsets of members, usually obscure but there are still reasons. Anyway, in regards to the config generating util, check out my geocities site, you'll find a poorly working source copy. I'm not going to link it directly since it's totally unsupported and it's kinda pointless since once I get it working I'd already would have posted the output.

LOL.. I'm trying to educate the non-coding community here.  I am trying to be convincing without drawing in the jargons and advanced knowledge (reminds me of teaching freshmen general programming in ANSI C for the first time....) that will just confuse people further.  As for the "legit" reasons, they are meant for coders: those who knows it, do; those who don't, you probably don't need to know, and probably better that way

PS: tot to coders, "legit" justs means "won't get rejected by compiler"....  no matter how evil your code.  We can just claim : it's the simplest/most direct/easiest-to-implement manner

[penguinofhonor]

Hey, this is broken in the new version.

[Nonanonymous]

Yeah, Dwarf Companion won't load in the current version for me, and I could use it so that my adventurers stop getting mauled to death by assorted angry wildlife hiding in their backpacks.

[Jay]

We haven't heard from bartavelle in four days.  Keeping this bumped since it's a pretty important tool, even if it doesn't work with 39f...

[penguinofhonor]

Yeah, I use this to bypass the completely broken healing system. Your spine hurts just a little? You can walk and work and even kill enemies? So why can't you spar?

[sphr]

I would think that it's most important function is to somewhat bypass DF's very hard to use unit list.  I simply love the ability to sort and scroll through the whole list of dwarves, see what they are currently doing and jump to each one if necessary..  Also, the ability to directly view their best skills is simply the best feature imo.  Before this, I can only manually go to each dwarf (searching from top of unit list every time I finish with one) and access their general page to scroll up and down to look for the best skills.  At least this doesn't seem to be provided by other tools like tweak yet.  Tweak is more of a toolbox, which is not what I think I need.  I don't need to do strange things or hack/cheat etc.  I just need to be able to access sortable dwarf info spreadsheet style...

Another thing I am beginning to appreciate, since it is in python source, is that we can easily modify/tweak it.  I modified the alert system slightly to add a  "Promote Me!" message to the alerts when the dwarves reach certain skill level according to their custom profession.  (E.g. when military dwarves reach legendary in one weapon, I may want to assign new weapons to them).  This can be done quite easily even for a person with no programming background (just need to "imitate" some sample code and replace certain strings for instance) Without Dwarf Companion, trying to keep track of skill level of dwarves is a very, very tedious operation.

In fact, I got so reliant on it that I'm still using 39e without the expanded view...  It is that important a "UI patch", along with Dwarf Foreman, that I am even willing to give up (or rather, just delay) DF with large view...

Let's hope we hear from bartavelle soon.

[Draco18s]

Another thing I am beginning to appreciate, since it is in python source, is that we can easily modify/tweak it.

While nice, Pythod doesn't work on my laptop.  I'm trying again now (as I reinstalled windows last week) but I remember the last time I did this was that Python had a HUGE list of dependencies that no one ever told you about (which had other unlisted dependencies, ad nausium).

Yup.  DFcompanion failed to start because libglade-2.0-0.dll was not found.

[sphr]

While nice, Pythod doesn't work on my laptop.  I'm trying again now (as I reinstalled windows last week) but I remember the last time I did this was that Python had a HUGE list of dependencies that no one ever told you about (which had other unlisted dependencies, ad nausium).

Yup.  DFcompanion failed to start because libglade-2.0-0.dll was not found.

hmmm... I got it working on almost first try... I already had python installed so all I need was glade.  To install glade, you need to install two more libs that glade is dependent on which is on the same page... I recall 3 libs total.... the link to glade is on bartavelle's DC page somewhere, and the other 2 dependent libs are on the glade page itself.

[Draco18s]

So, in other words, for Python to work on Windows I need 5 installers from 3 different websites, yes?  All of it unexplained?

[sphr]

The installers here are not the windows kind (adding tons of stuff to reg, setting up whatever secret windows stuff).. it usually just copies files into python home directory, which is a usual way it works.  You can pretty much do it manually if you like, but usually, leaving it to the installer is best.  You have to try to understand that what you are installing is not a single application.  It is a core development suite + libraries.  It is not a typical  "end-user application".

But if you are not willing to put in this effort or accept this kind of trouble, then I guess you'll have to wait until somebody compiled it to a exe.  Of course, you loose any possibilities of tweaking it to suit your purposes.  It just comes down to choices.

[bartavelle]

So, in other words, for Python to work on Windows I need 5 installers from 3 different websites, yes?  All of it unexplained?

The explanations on the wiki page are supposed to be sufficient ...

I'll soon update the tool btw.

[Draco18s]

The installers here are not the windows kind (adding tons of stuff to reg, setting up whatever secret windows stuff).. it usually just copies files into python home directory, which is a usual way it works.  You can pretty much do it manually if you like, but usually, leaving it to the installer is best.  You have to try to understand that what you are installing is not a single application.  It is a core development suite + libraries.  It is not a typical  "end-user application".

....

• Go to pygtk.org
• Go to the download section and figure out where the Windows installer is.
• Download the PyGTK Windows Installer from the GNOME FTP.
  
• Install it and figure out that you need the Python Installer (that's not explained).
• Install it and figure out that you also need PyCairo and PyGobject. (not explained)
• Install Py[Cairo|Object], try PyGTK, and figure out that you also need the  GTK+ runtime for windows, which is on an unofficial webpage, since the official win32 gtk+ binaries are a bunch of .zip files. (not explained and very hard to figure out)

Each one won't even INSTALL unless you have the previous one.  Copying files my tail.

[sphr]

Each one won't even INSTALL unless you have the previous one.  Copying files my tail.

Before you get more agitated, I am speaking in a very abstract form, the way python system and libraries works.  It stores its library dlls and src in its own directory.  To manually install something, most of the time we just have to copy stuff.  At least all those libs you mentioned bothered to create a nice installer that copies precompiled stuff for you.  Many times, people have to download entire source libraries and build them manually before they can be used ( a scripting language like python just need the most core dll and the source can be compiled jit). 

Maybe I've made the mistake of saying the wrong stuff to the wrong audience.  I am just regretful that whatever I've said is totally irrelevant and useless to you, given that you are probably not interested in python itself.

The explanations on the wiki page are supposed to be sufficient ...
I'll soon update the tool btw.

I didn't have problems with the instructions, but I'd probably made the same mistake as you, overlooking perhaps our own familiarity with such stuff and underestimating the difficulties to less familiar people.  and yeah, a more layman instructions could make less people hate python  

Just for consideration, I was wondering if the creature parsing part can be somewhat refactored such that it becomes easier for people to add custom alerts?  Currently, I'm inserting my mods directly into the code that parses the creature info.  I was wondering if it will be more useful if the creature parsing (and adding to display grid) be made to call a generic function that passes the creature data and alerts in (by default empty), so that if users want to add their own customized alerts, they just do that inside that function alone without messing with the rest of the code. 

e.g. have a empty handler method like

Code: [Select]

def onParseCreature(self, c, alerts):
  if( ... do some  check to creature c ... ):
    alerts.append("Custom Alert!")

and somewere in getCreature before the last return insert

Code: [Select]

  self.onParseCreature(c, alerts) #process user alerts

Subsequently, can probably put up several samples of useful checks and alerts for people to copy/paste/modify.

Just a thought and in the meantime looking forward to your update (so that I can finally move big grid!)

[Draco18s]

Maybe I've made the mistake of saying the wrong stuff to the wrong audience.  I am just regretful that whatever I've said is totally irrelevant and useless to you, given that you are probably not interested in python itself.

Python is wonderful, it just is a b*tch to install on Windows (and even then sometimes doesn't work).

As for me, I don't really give a flying rat's rear end about being able to modify the code.  Maybe if there was something I really wanted the program to do, then maybe.  I more or less gave up on coding a long while ago when no one (i.e. the university) was teaching me how to do anything constructive with code.  And then insisted on teaching me VHDL and asking me to program things like a 32 bit processor in VHDL or how to write a compiler (without giving me a lick of actual code, I was told I'd get to see some code in two weeks, I'm still waiting and I left the CS program 3 years ago).

Python is great.

But no one on Windows cares enough for the aggravation (if they did, they'd be on Linux already).

Oh, and one final note: the python installer I did get couldn't even uninstall itself due to a lack of something (yes, the uninstall file supplied by the installer did not work, it was asking for an .msi package I didn't have, I had to run the downloaded .msito remove it).

[bartavelle]

What i meant, by "the wiki instructions should be sufficient", is that most "not explained" points in Draco18s's list are indeed explained in the "how" section. It is however true that these points are not explained in the DC archive, and that the instructions are quite concise