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question about file format

J

JohnLaird

New member
Context:
I'm running a character in a friend's pathfinder game, we have a large group- usually 5+ every time he runs it (every other weekend). He is using the Hero Labs software product to manage our characters in-game. What we are doing right now is scanning or photo-copying our character sheets and handing them to him every time we level since not everyone has the money to buy a copy of the software.

I haven't broached this to the GM yet but what I am trying to do is write a program (C# and .NET, using XML as a file format as an intermediary) that will "let" players fill out a paperless character sheet, save it to my native XML so that the program can reload it later, and then export to PDF or XHTML. The GM can copy and paste from this and dump it into Hero Labs. However, it would be really cool if I could just export it to the Hero Labs format and save him the trouble of copy and pasting. Before you ask- I'm doing this for free in order to develop my skills as a programmer, I have no interest in selling this.

Question:
Does Hero Labs use an XML file format for characters that I can parse? If so, can I have a copy of it (and maybe even the XSD)? I'm willing to buy a copy of the Hero Labs software.

I know this kind of program would undercut Hero Labs a bit, but I thought it was worth asking the question. Thanks for reading this.
 
chiefweasel said:
I think there is a thread about this already. XML is used for HL, but the output format is complicated.
Click to expand...
Where is the thread? I don't really care how complicated it is as long as it is XML. There should also be an accompanying XSD schema file that is used to validate it and describe the layout.
 
The best way is to simply get a .por file from your DM. That is what characters are stored in. It is in XML format. The problem you will have is trying to relate the values and batch IDs they store in the .por that reference back to a Thing in HL.

So for example your players says he has the Dodge feat. You would have to have some type of x-ref table that says Dodge is equal to XXXXXX with these element tags. I am 99% sure that LW won't give you that information.

So it would be a huge set of trial and error to get it to work right. Not really hard programming other than trying to figure out what everything matches too.

Best of luck but its the best I can tell you.
 
As was noted by Colen, if you're not worried about Import, you're better off saving the character sheet in XML format (it's under Files, something about custom output) which just has the info, not the references to internal data.
 
Duggan said:
As was noted by Colen, if you're not worried about Import, you're better off saving the character sheet in XML format (it's under Files, something about custom output) which just has the info, not the references to internal data.
Click to expand...
He wants to go the other way. He wants to create the .por files external of HL and have HL open/import into itself.

What Colen was talking about is have HL generate a more normal XML document so that external applications could more easily read the character that HL produced.
 
JohnLaird said:
I haven't broached this to the GM yet but what I am trying to do is write a program (C# and .NET, using XML as a file format as an intermediary) that will "let" players fill out a paperless character sheet, save it to my native XML so that the program can reload it later, and then export to PDF or XHTML. The GM can copy and paste from this and dump it into Hero Labs. However, it would be really cool if I could just export it to the Hero Labs format and save him the trouble of copy and pasting. Before you ask- I'm doing this for free in order to develop my skills as a programmer, I have no interest in selling this.
Click to expand...

There is currently no way to accomplish what you're striving for here. The Hero Lab saved portfolio file is the only file format that can currently be read back in. That format includes extensive references back to the source data files and only tracks the changes from the defaults established in the data files. So you'd also have to fully parse and comprehend the complete data files - a daunting task that would essentially amount to re-creating Hero Lab.

We have ideas on the drawing board for allowing someone to create a character within HL, modify it within an external program, and then import those changes back into HL. However, we have no current plans in place for importing characters from other tools. It would be a major amount of work for us to do that, and there are numerous other tasks on our todo list that would provide significantly more value to a larger number of users.
 
Thanks, all of you. I appreciate it that you took time out of your day to reply. :)

I think I am going to continue the project, there just won't be a direct import into Hero Labs. I won't be doing very much actual rule validation (just enough to maintain the integrity of the files and streamline input) but it will still eliminate the photo-copying/scanning/bring in blank character sheets.
 
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