URL:
<http://gna.org/patch/?3351>
Summary: Allow rulesets to override the default helpdata.txt?
Project: Freeciv
Submitted by: jtn
Submitted on: Sun Jul 1 11:24:18 2012
Category: None
Priority: 3 - Low
Status: Need Info
Privacy: Public
Assigned to: None
Originator Email:
Open/Closed: Open
Discussion Lock: Any
Planned Release:
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Details:
An idea I've been toying with for a while. Has problems, so may end up
rejected.
The supplied helpdata.txt containing help on basic Freeciv concepts -- cities,
happiness, production, etc -- and the basic help structure bends over
backwards to not be specific to the supplied rulesets, and yet it's still not
an ideal reference for any ruleset that departs radically from the norm.
I've been wondering for a while if we should make it possible for keen ruleset
authors to replace all (or part) of it with their own helpdata.txt customised
to their ruleset.
I've no evidence of demand for this feature, it's just something that's
occurred to me while rewriting the default helpdata.txt.
----
The main problem with this idea is that the ruleset is on the server but
helpdata.txt is on the client. So the association would require downloading a
client-side modpack (perhaps not a problem for the kind of full-service
modpack we're talking about -- probably if it has its own help, it has its own
tileset as well), and the server would need to at most hint at its location,
similar to "preferred_tileset".
I'm nervous of sending helpdata.txt over the network from the server -- quite
apart from being big, it would likely end up localised in the server language
rather than the client language. Even if we supply the msgids over the
network, that would lead to poor user experience in the default case where
client and server versions were different and help text changed in a minor way
between them -- client would see some paragraphs not localised.
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