Character Sheets

[NeoFax]

Originally Posted by Nikmal

The cheaper programs have a much larger learning curve just to use the program so please explain how they are better then Hero Labs? Just using a program like PCGen and customizing most of the character crunch in the PCGen is dang near impossible...
Be glad this is not PCgen or another "free" character generator as they are still trying to catch up with how far Hero Labs has come AND have as good an interface as Hero Labs too. Not to mention you WILL need to know programming to do any custom input.

What a line of BS! PC-Gen uses text files, so if you can type in a text editor, you can code pretty much anything you want. Also, PC-Gen has third party content which I don't see much of here on these boards. WOW! PC-Gen has been using XSLT for quite a long time, so the hurdle is the same. Please refrain from spewing falsehoods.

[rob]

Whoa! I can wholly understand that you take exception to some of the assertions made by Nikmal. However, there's absolutely no reason to get confrontational and potentially start a flame war.

I need everyone to take a deep breath before posting about the relative pros and cons of different products, whether in this thread or any other. Disagreements are fine, personal opinions are fine, but polite discourse must be the order of the day here. Thank you in advance for everyone's compliance with this simple rule.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussions....

[Grog]

Originally Posted by Adam.Ormond

A brief description of XSLT can be found here.

You don't need programming skills to figure out how to write an XSLT, and if the XML to be processed is available outside of HeroLab, there are a number of free applications that exist to make writing XSLTs more accessible to the non-technical.

I'm a code guy but like short cuts. Recommendations of editors? I've poked around some and there is a variety out there. Please name a good one or two so I can narrow my searches. I'm running Linux FWIW. Thanks!

[BigFriendlyDave]

Originally Posted by Grog

I'm a code guy but like short cuts. Recommendations of editors? I've poked around some and there is a variety out there. Please name a good one or two so I can narrow my searches. I'm running Linux FWIW. Thanks!

Been poking about with EditiX http://www.editix.com which has a perfectly adequate free version which works on Win, Mac and Linux. - it has the advantage that you can test your xslt up against the original xml - plus i've been looking at creating an XSL Formatting Object transformer which would give a degree of page control and allow more options for output formats such as pdf et al.

[Adam.Ormond]

I'm a professional Microsoft .NET C# developer, so I really only know tools for the Windows platform. I've used XML Notepad 2007, XmlPad, and of course Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010.

Altova makes some really great products, but I'm pretty sure they cost $$$$.

[NeoFax]

Originally Posted by Grog

I'm a code guy but like short cuts. Recommendations of editors? I've poked around some and there is a variety out there. Please name a good one or two so I can narrow my searches. I'm running Linux FWIW. Thanks!

I recommend Notepad++ using WINE if you are fine with a text editor. If you want a GUI, you can use Serna Syntext I think is what it is called.

[nylanfs]

Originally Posted by Grog

I'm a code guy but like short cuts. Recommendations of editors? I've poked around some and there is a variety out there. Please name a good one or two so I can narrow my searches. I'm running Linux FWIW. Thanks!

Here's what we've found at PCGen http://wiki.pcgen.org/Text_Editors

[Cullyn]

Originally Posted by rob

If we're wrong about the custom output mechanism and nobody puts something together over the summer, we'll make it a high priority to get this done ourselves after GenCon. Does that sound reasonable?

It was great seeing the Lone Wolf folks at Gen Con and I had a pretty good conversation concerning Realm Works which I'm really looking forward to. That said, I just wanted to make a quick gentle yet mildly insistent poke about the above quote. While a few folks have been experimenting with custom Pathfinder sheets I'd really love to see something along the lines of the official sheet from Lone Wolf. At the very least it would give those with the inclination the ability to start their customizations with something more along the official lines.

For being such a pain about this, I should probably volunteer to help out at their booth next year.

[thundershot]

I pretty much only want the current character sheet WITHOUT the 3 line limit... Anyone who can do that will have my gratitude!

[Cullyn]

Just a soft poke to bring this to the forefront of potential attention once again. I'm not looking for anything instantly, just an acknowledgement from the fine folks at Lone Wolf that this being worked on. In a Pathfinder session last night there was some discussion of the... shortcomings of the existing printed character sheet and that reminded me of this so I figured I'd be a pest again.