Realm Works Feature Survey - Questions

[liz]

The Realm Works Feature Survey is now live! You can learn more and take the survey by heading to our website!

If you have any questions about the survey, check to see if we've already answered your question in the in the "Realm Works Feature Survey Information" thread. If you don't see it answered, ask your question in here! We'll get you an answer as soon as possible. Curious what your fellow Realm Works users want to others to vote for in the survey? Check out the “Realm Works Feature Survey Lobbying” Thread.

Don't forget, the survey ends on Sunday, January 11 at 11:59 pm PST!

[Acenoid]

I have two questions regarding the survey questions:

1.
- "Simple export and import via XML"
- and "Selection of multiple top-level content elements (such as topics) for bulk operations"

In the first question it is stated, that export / import cannot be used to implement it into an existing realm, only to create new / clone realms while in the next one it is stated that it is possible to export parts of a realm.
What I would find useful however would be for example to export categories and domain configuration from one realm into another. Would any of these features cover this?

Regarding the export format : Would this output xml be readable for example in microsoft word? Or, if no office software is present, in wordpad?
Will format information (bullet points etc. be exported)?

Or are these questions to specific?

Iam interested in printing / exporting, but if the question is aiming at a different "goal" then (even with one sad eye) I would put priorities elsewhere and ask again for implementation of export / import / printing in a way it would suit myself better


2. Regarding the question "Tighter and smoother integration between plots and topics": On this question I'm a bit unsure what will change/accomplished by tighter/smoother integration. What exactly would the consequences of this be?

Thanks for putting up this detailled survey. I like it so far.

[rob]

Originally Posted by Acenoid

What I would find useful however would be for example to export categories and domain configuration from one realm into another. Would any of these features cover this?

That would be covered by the simple export/import capability. All you'd do is export the structure without any content, and then you'd import that to start out a new realm.

Originally Posted by Acenoid

Regarding the export format : Would this output xml be readable for example in microsoft word? Or, if no office software is present, in wordpad?
Will format information (bullet points etc. be exported)?

XML is just text. So the text would be readable within any program, including Word. However, blocks of rich text MIGHT get mangled by Word when you import into it. I honestly have no idea how Word would handle that. Similarly, any images would be encoded and look like a big block of random letters and digits within Word.

In general, XML is not intended for use within an application like Word, so I'm guessing that you have a use case in mind that you're not sharing here. If you did share it, I might be able to give you a better answer.

Originally Posted by Acenoid

Regarding the question "Tighter and smoother integration between plots and topics": On this question I'm a bit unsure what will change/accomplished by tighter/smoother integration. What exactly would the consequences of this be?

Right now, you create a plot with plot points and you create topics separately. The plot elements can be associated with topics, but that's the extent of it. What if you could create a plot point that's automatically tied to a scene. And what if you could view and even edit aspects of the scene topic from within the plot interface instead of switching back and forth? It would give you a lot more power and flexibility directly within the plot interface. That's a very brief glimpse into what that capability would include.

Does those answers help?

[pyremius]

Very nice survey. It only caused me to come up with one new set of requests.

[ruhar]

Will we get to see the final numbers from the survey? I'm curious to know how everything rated in comparison to what I thought it should be.

[MNBlockHead]

Just finished the survey. It'll be interesting to see how my wishes match those of other users. I find that my higher ranked features focus on helping the DM build worlds better, but l can see how for many others the collaborative functions of the tool will be more important. Hope the survey results are released.

[rob]

Originally Posted by ruhar

Will we get to see the final numbers from the survey? I'm curious to know how everything rated in comparison to what I thought it should be.

Nope, no numbers. The reason for that is simply that we are NOT going to go absolutely by the numbers. The numbers are intended as a strong influence, but there are many other critical factors to consider on our end. There are business realities, potential partnerships, relative difficulty of tasks, risk and uncertainty issues, available resources (different members of the team are more skilled in different areas), and a bunch of other factors to weigh. If we publish the actual numbers, someone will scream at us for not honoring those results exactly due to some of those other factors. That doesn't help anyone. There's also the fact that publishing the results will potentially give information to other tool creators (read: competitors), so we have to be mindful of that as well.

The survey results will be an invaluable guide for us. But they will not be an absolute determiner of how we proceed. Rest assured, if we weren't going to give the survey results significant weight in our plans, we wouldn't have invested a huge amount of time putting it together. We won't be straying from the results unless there are compelling reasons to do so.

[Acenoid]

Originally Posted by rob

Does those answers help?

Thank you for the reply. Probably the print to PDF function would preserve the layout better. Basically the case was to export data to create hand outs or GM notes for a game session.

Also export could be useful for me to import data into another tool that I use to track combat.

Finally i had hoped to import some configuration data like categories or tags into an existing realm. But i explained that case in the survey.

Best regards

[Tashtego]

If I wanted to eventually publish my own notes into a sourcebook or do customised handouts, what is the best way of getting my text out of RW into a wordprocessor? I am excited about the idea of using RW to organise my mess of campaign notes into a sourcebook, but I don't think either these proposed PDF or XML export options will help me. I also have no intention of using others' copyrighted material.

[Acenoid]

Print PDF maybe? Copy Paste?
Not sure how tables will survive this action.

Once XML export is out, maybe any kind soul with knowledge about programming needs to write a converter....