New plug-in editor: Rezilla Custom

Zacha Pedro, on Mar 11 2006, 10:12 AM, said:

However, it seems the limitation of selection of the hex editor is a quite hard one. Even if I modify the code so that the hex part of the hex editor has focus when entering a range in the bottom field, what's actually selected (and hence goes away with delete or is copied with copy) is only what is shown, what you see is indeed what you get.
View Post

I haven't actually tried hex editing in Rezilla yet but if you're saying what I think you're saying then ResEdit does this too. Really annoying, yes, but the simple solution is to click once where you want to start, scroll to where you want to end, then shift-click to make the selection.

Zacha Pedro, on Mar 11 2006, 10:12 AM, said:

(and as for you poor Australia/New Zealand/Japan people, it will in fact be Monday around noon...)
View Post

😞

Say, any chance of Rezilla allowing editing of file info like ResEdit did? I can't use ResEdit anymore and am really missing that ability.

(EDIT): Okay, just noticed something really weird. I had a disk image mounted and opened one of the files on it with Rezilla. So now that file is in Rezilla's Recent Items and whenever I open Rezilla it automatically mounts the disk image.

This post has been edited by Guy : 11 March 2006 - 06:08 PM

Guy, on Mar 11 2006, 10:58 PM, said:

I haven't actually tried hex editing in Rezilla yet but if you're saying what I think you're saying then ResEdit does this too. Really annoying, yes, but the simple solution is to click once where you want to start, scroll to where you want to end, then shift-click to make the selection.
View Post

That doesn't work in the Rezilla hex editor, apparently only what's actually on the screen can be selected

Guy, on Mar 11 2006, 10:58 PM, said:

Say, any chance of Rezilla allowing editing of file info like ResEdit did? I can't use ResEdit anymore and am really missing that ability.
View Post

It's in Bernard's todo list, others have asked for this (understandably as they are dumping ResEdit as we speak). Right now, what I use whenever I want to do these things is is use the SetFile and GetFileInfo command-line tools that come with the developer tools, but it is not satisfying for people who don't know how to use the Terminal (though doing so is already advanced editing).

So Guy, you indeed have an Intel Mac. Really interesting. I'd like one to try and natively compile ViewRLE, but it would be a little complicated for you to do; however may I ask you what is the performance under Rosetta, so that I know whether I need to get to make an Universal Binary fast? And before anyone asks, Rezilla is not ready to be Intel-native, Bernard is working on it but I fear it will take some time. Fortunately none of what it does is processor-intensive, so performance will be okay under emulation.

Guy, on Mar 11 2006, 10:58 PM, said:

(EDIT): Okay, just noticed something really weird. I had a disk image mounted and opened one of the files on it with Rezilla. So now that file is in Rezilla's Recent Items and whenever I open Rezilla it automatically mounts the disk image.View Post

Yep, I saw something similar with PowerPlant's disk image. Go figure. I ended up deleting the dmg.

This post has been edited by Zacha Pedro : 11 March 2006 - 06:11 PM

ViewRLE seems fine. Just as fast as it was before. As for the disk image, I think I'll just click Reset Recent Items ;). I have to ask though, what's with the weird, non-OS-X-like, preferences dialog?

Can't open read-only files by drag and drop.
Shouldn't the Save button close the window? If I click it twice it gives an error.

This post has been edited by Guy : 11 March 2006 - 11:27 PM

Rezilla Custom 2 has been officially released. Grab it from link removed, please useCustom 3 now. The same way, the source is available at link removed.

The necessary modifications to improve RSID proved to be more than I thought, so I delayed them for custom 3. Furthermore, I did not get Bernard's modified ppat window so this bug is still there. But other than that, all the modifications I described are there, plus two bug fixes: you can no longer insert a list item in a fixed count list with the + key (silly me, I correct a bug and add a related feature, and did not think at first to check that the same bug would happen with the new feature), and corrected res type padding so that 'snd' is the same as 'snd '.

This version includes Rezilla-optimised templates for all Nova custom resources, and an oűtf template to work around Rezilla immobility with keyed sections. As with the previous version, please test it to death and tell me what you like (and what you dislike) about it.

The previous custom version has been removed from my webspace and should be deleted.

Have fun!

This post has been edited by Zacha Pedro : 26 June 2006 - 05:50 AM

Guy, on Mar 12 2006, 12:29 AM, said:

ViewRLE seems fine. Just as fast as it was before. As for the disk image, I think I'll just click Reset Recent Items ;). I have to ask though, what's with the weird, non-OS-X-like, preferences dialog?

Can't open read-only files by drag and drop.
Shouldn't the Save button close the window? If I click it twice it gives an error.
View Post

Go figure for the pref dialog. That's how Bernard did it.

The problem of drag-and-drop is a little more complicated because there are Apple Events involved. When I first fixed the bug I realised about it but I haven't made anything about it yet.

This error indeed happens when there are keyed sections. I'll investigate it. I suppose you can save without closing the window so that you can progressively 1: validate your input so that you know where you typed a wrong value and 2: save to the hard drive (though to do this you also have to go back to the main file window and save the file) progressively so that you don't lose work to a crash. Not that Rezilla crashed on me recently, but still.

Small update: I just got the updated window and layout resources, to fix the pattern editor bug, from Bernard, so you might wish to use them; to do this, just replace the Rezilla.rsrc file inside Rezilla Custom/Contents/Resources/ (come on, you know about bundles by now, if you don't it's control-click on the app->show package contents) by the one attached to this post.

Attached File(s)

For some reason clicking "Save" doesn't work.

(edit)Err, it saves the resource but doesn't take me out of the editor. I have to click cancel to exit the editor. Was this the intended behavior? :huh:

This post has been edited by Skyfox : 15 March 2006 - 06:24 PM

Yes, it is. I agree it isn't that usual - think of each resource as a tiny document in and on itself. Then if you're actually done, close the window if you like.

This post has been edited by Zacha Pedro : 16 March 2006 - 08:41 AM

Zacha Pedro, on Mar 16 2006, 05:40 AM, said:

Yes, it is. I agree it isn't that usual - think of each resource as a tiny document in and on itself. Then if you're actually done, close the window if you like.

I would love it if you put it back to the default way. Its quite a few mouse clicks more then the normal OK=Exit, and can be a real PITA when dealing with many resources.

-Open
-Edit
-Save
-Close

vs

-Open
-Edit
-Close

repeat 500x and the former becomes painful.

I can't do anything (all right, "much") about it, I'm not the main and original author. You can save keystrokes by hitting enter (not return), then command-w, then the down arrow, then command-e. See, no mouse click! I agree it's unusual and suboptimal, but in this day and age, we can't be too picky about our stuff. Because we have no other usable general-purpose resource editor, now.

After a break of one week (more like, one weekend, since I only work on this during weekends for reasons that I hope are obvious), work is being resumed on Rezilla Custom. Since you discovered no problem in version 2 I'll work on adding features.

Nothing much to report, but I've run into another problem with opening locked files- if you drag a locked file onto the Resilla icon, Rezilla will open, but the file will not. Also, if a file that opens automatically in Rezilla is locked, and you double-click on it, Rezilla will open, but once again, the file will not. The only way to open a locked file is to go through the "open" dialog box, which is a royal pain if you have locked reference files in two or three different places.

Edwards

Are we allowed to complain about the small picky things? It's annoying how I can select multiple resources yet can't open them all in one go.

Wow, I was beginning to think I would not get much feedback on custom 2, even though I did put all the templates in it and fixed a number of minor stuff...

Edwards: The issue here (that I have thought about when I first fixed the problem with locked files) is that we're in the context of an AppleEvent, which means it would not be a good idea to put a dialog or the Apple Event could time out (to simplify). I'll probably change so that, if it detects it can't open the file for writing, it will retry in read-only mode without asking for your opinion, which makes better sense in this context.

@guy, on Mar 30 2006, 06:40 AM, said in New plug-in editor: Rezilla Custom:

Are we allowed to complain about the small picky things? It's annoying how I can select multiple resources yet can't open them all in one go.

Sure thing, I'll see if I can fix that. Many such small annoyances are probably easy to fix.

Anyway, please be tuned saturday, I may need your help.

@zacha-pedro, on Mar 30 2006, 02:50 AM, said in New plug-in editor: Rezilla Custom:

Edwards: The issue here (that I have thought about when I first fixed the problem with locked files) is that we're in the context of an AppleEvent, which means it would not be a good idea to put a dialog or the Apple Event could time out (to simplify).

In my opinion, as long as the Apple Event timing out doesn't actually crash the computer, it's nicer to the user to give them at least a chance of opening the file (I presume the dialog box would pop up as usual, just with a chance that the program will be in the background?) than to make it impossible to open it that way at all. This looks like a case of "guaranteed percieved failure" versus "possible percieved failure", and I generally prefer the latter, especially given that in this case, the former produces no error message, but in my experience, that latter does produce an error message (a message saying "Apple Event has timed out", although admittedly I've only seen that while working with AppleScript).

Anyway, opening the file without asking about read-only mode sounds like a good solution. I don't particularly like that warning dialog anyway (although I can see some instances where it might be useful).

Edwards

You mentioned the main problem with AppleEvents timing out: it completely screws up AppleScripts, in that the script will prematurely terminate, not doing any further task, and Rezilla is scriptable. I should know - I have an AppleScript that plays the "ready to work" orc peon sound of War3 and quits QT player once finishes playing. But once in a while, QT will show its ad for QT pro, and the Apple Event will time out (not to mention it doesn't play the sound until I dismiss the ad), therefore QT pro will not quit once done.
Of course, the script won't get much work done with the current behavior of not opening, but at least it knows that Rezilla did not open and can react in consequence.

So I postponed the decision on what to do in this case, especially as other people might like an obvious way of being informed that the file they've just asked Rezilla to edit, can't be edited. So before making complicated things to get a dialog anyway in the medium term, I'll do this quick solution for now.

I think opening it in read-only should be fine. The user can make whatever changes he/she wants and then when they try to save it will Save As instead.

Okay, I just opened a file and made a couple of changes (renamed some resources I think was all) then decided to close it without saving. This appeared to destroy the file - Rezilla told me no resource fork was found. <_<
Luckily, I had a copy on another computer. I'm not in the habit of keeping backups but I was working with the file using a classic app which obviously I could only do on a PPC machine.

EDIT: this was my April's fool joke for 2006, so you might wish not to download this version and stick with 2 (or download Custom 3 or better, if it happens I've released it since these words have beeen written). But if you really want to experience this joke version, be my guest, but do not complain that I have not warned you before. I expect to keep hosting it for hostorical purposes, but I may eventually end up removing it, in which case wanadoo will tell you it found no such file.

I said I would need your help this saturday, now is the time. I have experimentally added 3 new features to Rezilla Custom:
- tabbing in template editor
- RSID are accompanied by a CASE-like popup menu listing the resources of that type in the file
- keyed sections contain a popup menu that allows you to change the value of the key dynamically

These changes required many modifications to the code, which could have introduced bugs. So, I've packaged a small Custom 2.5 test version for you to check that they are indeed no bugs before going on. If you want to help, be fast: this version might not stay for long, so grab it today while it's hot!

REMINDER, THIS IS AN APRIL'S FOOL JOKE

This post has been edited by Zacha Pedro : 03 April 2006 - 03:30 PM

Tabbing seems to work 🙂 Skips over some field types though (strings) - I guess that's supposed to happen? Now it just needs to automatically scroll when you tab to a field out of sight.
Changing outfit modtypes unfortunately does not appear to work. Always get this weird error no matter what resource or what I try changing it to and I'm left with no choice but to say "Crap" 😉
RSID popup menu always says it couldn't find any. I'll try setting them to "Please try later." to see if that makes my plug uber cool 🆒
Just had a crash before when pasting in a snd resource to overwrite an existing one (tried twice, same result).

And this isn't really related, but ViewRLE is annoying me by always asking me if I'm sure I want to close the file even when I don't have any RLEs loaded.