Colours, XML, HTML, XulRunner, Oh My!

Well, we have one definite vote for reversing the green and yellow, so I thought I'd do a test screen:

I think that works better. I could be tempted to mute the colours a little more. Maybe up the blue component a tad, and reduce the red and green down to about 200. It's definitely looking better than it was.

Since we're talking screens (and since I'm still trying to avoid any real work here), this could be a good time to review the way Clonemaster screens work, Basically, it's all XML. Here's  the start of the cloning screen

<Screen ScreenName="Cloning" ScriptFile="Cloning.lua" IdleEvents="True" >

        <Window Name            = "Cloning"
                XPos            = "0"
                YPos            = "0"
                Width           = "1"
                Height          = "1"
                Border          = "0"
        />

        <Image  Name            = "Tank"
                File            = "tube_occupied.png"
                XPos            = "40"
                YPos            = "40"
                Width           = "229"
                Height          = "479"
                Border          = "2"
        />

        <Button Name            = "VatLeft"
                Image           = "left_28x28"
                XPos            = "42"
                YPos            = "5"
                Width           = "28"
                Height          = "28"
                Transparency    = "true"
                Scale           = "true"
                Hidden          = "false"
        />

So it's basically the same idea as HTML. The tags work more or less the same way, and the buttons are going to have Lua handlers, similar to javascript handlers in web pages.

In fact, someone on the PPG forums recently suggested implementing stylesheets for the screen layouts. Which is something I'm desperate to avoid. It's ... well it;s like this:

If I do stylesheets, I've pretty comprehensively re-invented the wheel, and i might as well have made the thing a webapp from the word go. In fact, I suggested converting WhoreMaster to a webapp  a couple of years ago. it's still not a bad idea. The rendering engine is taken care of, and I just need to worry about the data and code.

The downside is that most of the code is Lua rather than javascript. That said, there are Xulrunner builds that can parse Lua, and I believe Liferea uses Lua in this way.

So it's an option. I'd get to stop worrying about layout issues and concentrate on the game. Downsides? Well, I don't know what compromises Xulrunner would force (there are always compromises) and I'd have to convert a chunk of existing code.

I'm thinking about it. Probably not going to do it, but thinking about it.