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Tips & Tricks / Best Practices Guide

R

rob

Administrator
Staff member
In the imminent release of Realm Works, there is a preliminary version of the Tips & Tricks (aka Best Practices) guide. This document is not complete, but it covers lots of useful material, so we're releasing it now so users can start leveraging it.

Within this document, there are lots of sections labeled "TBD", which means they are subjects that I'll be covering in future updates. To help me determine what's missing and prioritize which sections to flesh out next, I've created two threads in the Feature Requests forum. Please post in these two separate threads to voice your thoughts on these subjects:

Prioritizing What to Detail Next
Identifying What's Still Missing

Please do NOT post requests for new sections and/or votes for priorities in this thread. If you do, you will be chided for not reading these simple instructions. :)

If you have GENERAL questions about the Tips & Tricks guide, please post them in this thread.

Thanks!
 
Last edited:
I'm guessing such comments would be about something I haven't detailed enough or that isn't clear. So I classify that as "still missing".

Please post comments about existing sections in the "Still Missing" thread.

Thanks!
 
I am a little more than half way through this book, and I have to say that I wish I had RTFM before I had gotten started. You guys have done a stellar job with this manual. It also makes anyone appreciate the lengths you guys went to with the software design. It is pretty clear you folks were actually using it as you built it, and there are just so many good ideas in there that it is honestly just astonishing. I could gush on, but I'll spare everyone.

I eagerly await the missing portions, but I don't have any positive suggestions at this point. It seems very complete (well, once the TBD's are filled in).

One question: As you update the book, will we be able to tell what was added so we can read those portions without having to try to remember what we've already read before (i.e. will there be a list of new topics on these boards or something?)

In closing, I just have to recommend to everyone that if you only read one of the books in the documentation, this one should be it! Further, you really must read this. It will save you time in redo's.
 
This thread may or mayy not be the best place for this link (feel free to move LW if you think it is better served elsewhere)

Seems logical to me that a "how to video" would be easy to find here...

Joey Turco is doing a series of short videos that looks at various aspects of Realm Works on GameratiTV
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8q813Zr4rKXErKW6kZIflRFgH6vaiova

While they may (or may not) be best practices, some help beats no help....

enjoy
DLG
 
I would like to see the font size for the PDF bumped up. For ease of reading I'm not a fan of the font, but if you could bump the size to 10.25 it wouldn't be a strain to read when viewed at 100%. It will increase the number of pages, but I'm reading it on the computer, as I'm sure most users are, so that wouldn't be an issue.
 
And one of those documents is entitled "Tips & Tricks". The video covers highlights from that document.

Hope this helps!
 
There was a post suggesting an "example realm using material not under copyright" and some "upvoting" posts. As it doesn't really fall under the topic of this thread, I've moved those post here.
 
Creating Random Tables Using HTML & Java

http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=50225

Thanks to All below for their various round tabling on this topic :
Repeater07
mirtos
jkthomsen9
Parody
DavidP (LWD)
Jaynay27
Farnaby


Just my 2cp
Still think this would be better served (community wise) to have its own spot on forum so all could find without digging through threads. Hero Lab has how many sub-topics? and Realm Works has 2? I just think its time to set up another that captures elements like this.

DLG
 
How to insert a table by Silveras
Silveras said:
When you choose to "Convert Text to Table", there are some options you can set before clicking "Ok" to confirm. Make sure the option for columns is set to "Tab".. if there are no tabs in your text, you will need to add them. Id you only have spaces, Word will assume that's what you want to use to make separate columns.

My steps:

  • Copy table from PDF to clipboard
  • Paste into Word
  • Select all text
  • Set the font type and size I want (to match what I use in RealmWorks anyway)
  • Where each column should be, I make sure there is a TAB; this will make the text look uneven in some cases until you convert, but then it lines up. Also, delete extra spaces.
  • Make sure any header has enough TABs to create columns to match the table body (even if some will later be merged)
  • select all of the text in the table again
  • Select Insert|Convert Text to Table
  • Make sure that Word has selected "TAB" as the delimiter for columns
  • Check that the number of columns is what I expected; look over the rows to see if I can find any errors. If I can't, proceed...
  • Click Ok
  • Check the result for mis-aligned text / columns; Use Ctrl-Z to Undo if necessary
  • Fix any errors I found and repeat selecting text and convert to table
  • Merge any Title row cells that need to be merged
  • Merge any other cells that I want for fancy formatting (like titles that extend across all columns in the middle of the table).
  • Copy and paste into RealmWorks

With a little practice, it becomes fairly quick.

Short tables may not be worth the effort, and may just be easier to enter directly in RealmWorks.

So, for your example.. .
  • Copy from PDF
  • Paste into word
  • Add a TAB between "Housing Poor" and 50
  • Add a TAB between "Housing Moderate" and 120
  • Select both lines
  • Select Insert|Convert Text to Table
  • Check that "TAB" is the selected delimiter
  • Click Ok

That should convert those 2 lines into a 2-row 2-column table with the numbers in the second column.
Click to expand...
 
Thank you for this MNBlockHead, as a new user I just could not work this out. I think it was the blank desktop on the 2nd monitor that confused me.
 
How to change categories between Almanac and Mechanics References

Just because I think Rob posted a great tip and it will get lost otherwise, I'm copying it to here.

How to change categories between Almanac and Mechanics Reference.

1. Clone the category whose topics you want to migrate so that you have a user-created category.
2. Change the topics/articles based on the global category to be based on the new user-created category.
3. Change the user-created category from topic to article, or vice versa.
4. Change the topics/articles now based on the user-created category to the desired global category.
5. Delete the user-created category that was used solely for migration and is no longer needed.
 
Links & Ideas to Manage PDFs

Below are various Tips, and links for managing PDFs brought here for ease of access... Thanks to the collective round-tabling on this topic. I have included links within this site for review of the discussions, a cost comment (as of 1 Nov17 ) and lastly a direct external link to the reference software source if applicable (link Verified as of 1Nov17).

DaPlunk using Gimp for text extraction >
http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost.php?p=249418&postcount=5
DLG> Gimp is open source and Free

DaPlunk using "GetGreenShot" for quick screen extraction >
http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost.php?p=249658&postcount=11
DLG> GetGreenShot is open source and Free (For Windows) Mac App($2US)

Jamz fork of Maptools (http://maptool.nerps.net/) as discussed here>
http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost.php?p=257416&postcount=22
Also this is setup for 64bit, so if having trouble see here>
http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost.php?p=257523&postcount=29

DaPunks color correction for transparent backgrounds
http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost.php?p=244500&postcount=1

Jay_Nola for Fantasy Grounds PDF Extraction>
http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost.php?p=257931&postcount=1
DLG> FantasyGrounds is either subscription ($4-$10/mth) or License based ($39-$149)

Eightbitz for PDFmate
http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost.php?p=258010&postcount=6
DLG> PDFmate is free, OCR is limited to 3 pages Proversion $40US

Eightbitz & Myself for LibreOffice
http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost.php?p=258026&postcount=7
DLG> LibreOffice is open source and Free using Open Document Formatting

https://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://getgreenshot.org/
http://maptool.nerps.net
DaPunks You-tube Page>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5guLLTrTmY&feature=youtu.be
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/home/home.php#Downloadshttp://www.pdfmate.com/
https://www.libreoffice.org/
 
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