--- Keith Davies <keith.davies@...> wrote:

> On Tue, May 02, 2006 at 12:31:56AM -0400, Fred Drake wrote:
> > On 5/1/06, Keith Davies <keith.davies@...> wrote:
> > > I took a run at this a year or two ago. My first step was to go
> through
> > > the entire RSRD in Word, applying styles consistently (and adding
> styles
> > > to mark 'monster', 'feat', etc. beginnings).
> >
> > This is very much something I'd like to avoid doing in a word
> > processor of any sort. I can get by doing very basic in MS Word
> and
> > OpenOffice (including semantic marking like this), but I find it so
> > much easier in a real text editor.
>
> I agree entirely. This step took a number of hours -- I could have
> done
> it in a single day if I'd had everything set up ahead of time.

[Snipped for brevity.]

> And yes, it was mindnumbing and sucked. Thanks for asking.

I was hoping for some consistency in the RTF of the SRD so I could just
look at it and not what stylistic changes signal transitions from one
section of text to another. Then, I could either write a custom program
to parse it and output what I want, or I could just use sed.

>
> > I spent a little time this evening thinking about a LaTeX-based
> markup
> > language for this stuff, but there are so many bits and pieces that
> > beg for markup. Making use of some of this stuff from LaTeX is
> likely
> > beyond my level of TeX-fu. I wonder if using XML does make sense
> for
> > this, and then use XSLT to generate LaTeX for typesetting.
>
> This is what I was doing, yes. While *TeX is nice for formatting, I
> find it's not really good as the base for transformations.

Yes, Keith's observation is quite true. TeX can be used as a sort of
XML-ish semantic markup, but it *is* aimed more at producing pretty
documents for output to a printing device. However, TeX is a
Turing-complete programming environment (as is PostScript) and when you
really know TeX it can be twisted to do some ineteresting stuff.

To me, just getting a prettily formatted SRD isn't that interesting,
but writing something in TeX that could generate prettily formatted
NPCs for inclusion in other TeX documents (such as my campaign modules)
is rather interesting.

After giving the subject a little more thought, it would probably be
better overall to swipe someone else's XML rendition of the SRD, or
even "steal" the Hypertext SRD, and use XSLT to output the TeX.--I
understand XSLT to be capapble of giving you any output not just a
different XML.

>
> > Whatever the metalanguage, things like this always seem to demand
> new
> > markup languages on top of the base, and that always ends up being
> A
> > Project.
> >
> > Has anyone experimented with a specialized XML language for the
> SRD?
>
> That *is* what this mailing list is about, is it not? I think a
> bunch
> of us have. We might even settle on a standard, too, if we all had
> the
> same uses for the data.

The last statement seems to be one of the unresolvable issues, isn't
it? As another recent thread made plain most of us have different goals
and ideals in mind when we're doing our own little thing with XML and
the D20.

I would personally like to see some very generic declarative/semantic
markup that can be used to encapsulate all the rules of a D20 game that
could be parsed and acted upon by a "generic" D20 game engine. This
mythic game engine could be the heart of a MUD, a NPC/PC generator, a
help system for the harried DM, an electronic tabletop, or even the
rules engine of a M?MORPG. (I'm not saying it could be all those things
at once, but it could be used in any or all of those things.) With
everything defined in XML, swapping out the rules is as easy as
pointing at a new set of files. So, one day you play D20 Fantasy, and
the next you play D20 Modern or Sci-Fi, all with the same software.

Ambitious? Yes. Possible? Yes. Crazy? Quite likely. Does that last goal
contradict my previously stated goal of having a TeX-based PC
generator? Yes, it probably does. To quote Walt Whitman:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself.
I am large. I contain multitudes!

At any rate, I also know that given the constraints on my personal
time, I'm likely never to finish such an ambitious project, so I don't
start, but there it is. I lay it out there as a challenge to myself and
to others if they care to take it up.

Well, the nasty clock on the wall is telling me that I should get to
doing my "real" work.

Cheers,
Jason

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