XML Monster Files Encoding Discussion

[Evil Puncker]

Lets do a brainstorming to get to a consensus on which is the most suitable encoding that we can use in the monsters xml files, the files are mainly split between ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8, I know that doesn't really matter that much, but whatever...

 

[Alpha]

What's the point of this thread, when you should be making a push for monsters to be moved to the new Lua format instead?

 

[hellboy]

What's the point of this thread, when you should be making a push for monsters to be moved to the new Lua format instead?

Could you show some examples of monster lua format?

 

[Alpha]

Could you show some examples of monster lua format?

forgottenserver/data/monster/lua/#example.lua at master · otland/forgottenserver

A free and open-source MMORPG server emulator written in C++ - otland/forgottenserver

github.com

 

[Nekiro]

What's the point of this thread, when you should be making a push for monsters to be moved to the new Lua format instead?

why?

 

[skulls]

What is the point of this thread if you also said it doesnt matter much?

 

[EvulMastah]

what is the point of this thread if blarghargharghrrgrhrghr

 

[Sarah Wesker]

Lets do a brainstorming to get to a consensus on which is the most suitable encoding that we can use in the monsters xml files, the files are mainly split between ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8, I know that doesn't really matter that much, but whatever...

It depends on the language and what words you want to write, but since tibia only supports languages like English and Spanish, it would be best to use UTF-8 to generalize, but for most words in Spanish it is fine to use ISO- 8859-1 also called Latin-1

anyway, we are supposed to not use xml for certain things on the server, including monsters in the future, thank to Revscripts

 

[hellboy]

forgottenserver/data/monster/lua/#example.lua at master · otland/forgottenserver

A free and open-source MMORPG server emulator written in C++ - otland/forgottenserver

github.com

Thanks.

So we can dynamicly create monsters?

For example:
Inside on login:

• get player pet name
• create monster named "Pet - ${player_name}"
• set attacks based on player storage id?

Or it's still impossible at this moment.

Anyway it looks nice.
But if I want to remove for example gold/platinium/crystal coins from every single creature, then simple sed script isn't sufficient :/

 

[kokokoko]

Are there any drawbacks to using UTF-8? I imagine parsing the XML data will take slightly longer, along with slightly increased file sizes, but I'm guessing the difference is negligible.

 

[Evil Puncker]

yeah guys as I said, its not a big deal, I just wanted to have one encoding to all monster files, that is it. no need to all that

 

[Sarah Wesker]

It depends on the language and what words you want to write, but since tibia only supports languages like English and Spanish, it would be best to use UTF-8 to generalize, but for most words in Spanish it is fine to use ISO- 8859-1 also called Latin-1

anyway, we are supposed to not use xml for certain things on the server, including monsters in the future, thank to Revscripts

I don't really notice any difference, and even more so now that I no longer use xml files for monsters: D

 

[River KA]

In my opinion, the encode ISO-8859-1 is only necessary when special characters are in use (e.g., á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ, ...).
If there is no special characters, there is no reason to use ISO-8859-1; so keep using UTF-8 instead in this case.

 

[Don Daniello]

In my opinion, the encode ISO-8859-1 is only necessary when special characters are in use (e.g., á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ, ...).
If there is no special characters, there is no reason to use ISO-8859-1; so keep using UTF-8 instead in this case.

Wait a second. Are you implying that UTF-8 cannot handle special characters?

Generally, there is no point in using anything but UTF-8 which is most universal. However, the RL client AFAIK uses ISO-8859-1, so characters outside that set are not supported there.

 

[River KA]

Wait a second. Are you implying that UTF-8 cannot handle special characters?

Generally, there is no point in using anything but UTF-8 which is most universal. However, the RL client AFAIK uses ISO-8859-1, so characters outside that set are not supported there.

No, no. Never said that.
But, if you create any Lua/XML code in TFS or Lua in OTClient, you can easily show special characters if you are using ISO-8859-1.
Since the thread is about TFS, I said that.
I don't know an easy way to do that using UTF-8.

 

[Evil Puncker]

but since this thread is specific to monsters files, and they aren't supposed to have any special characters (?) I think using UTF-8 would be okay?

(remember guys, I just wanted to have a "standard" encoding to all monster files, not to go too deep into what is better or not)

as I have come to conclusion that in this case it doesn't really matter, I'll stick to utf-8, thank you everyone for your inputs, the thread will remain open in case someone else have anything left to contribute to the discussion.

 

[River KA]

but since this thread is specific to monsters files, and they aren't supposed to have any special characters (?) I think using UTF-8 would be okay?

(remember guys, I just wanted to have a "standard" encoding to all monster files, not to go too deep into what is better or not)

as I have come to conclusion that in this case it doesn't really matter, I'll stick to utf-8, thank you everyone for your inputs, the thread will remain open in case someone else have anything left to contribute to the discussion.

As I know, there are some loot items that uses special characters. E.g., jalapeño, I think.
It means, the monster XML file, in which has the loot list, needs to use ISO-8859-1.
The others, could be UTF-8, as they are already.

I do not think it is necessary to set ALL XML monster files as ISO-8859-1 as default for monster names or loot names within few files that uses special characters.
Just my opinion.

 

[Evil Puncker]

As I know, there are some loot items that uses special characters. E.g., jalapeño, I think.

yeah but cip removed the "~" from item names a few years ago

 

[River KA]

yeah but cip removed the "~" from item names a few years ago

Are there any XML monster file that has special characters still?

 

[Evil Puncker]

Are there any XML monster file that has special characters still?

no.