A Suggestion

[FifthWanderer]

I had an idea for all you would-be and current data file authors out there. Why not use a scripting language such as Python for generating data files? Field data should be easy enough to prepare in a text file, and writing scriptes shouldn't take long. I've used scripts before to generate html code.

[FifthWanderer]

An explanation of the above:

A lot of RPG data either comes from or can be converted to tables. So it's ideal for batch processing. Here's a rough outline of the process.

1. Type up the data in the spreadsheet software of your choice-MS Excel, OpenOffice Calc, whatever.

2. Save out the data as a tab-delimted text file. You may have to clean up the text file by removing column headers and such.

3. Write a script file that reads in the data, formats it as an XML element, and writes it back out to a separate text file.

4. Cut and paste from the output file into the Hero Lab data file.

5. Load, test, debug.

Not all data is suitable for batch processing like this, and you'll still have to do some manual editing. However, the raw creation process should be speeded up greatly.