Re: Andy's Dirtside II Web Page

> In message <9609230209.AA03587@zeorymer.alf.dec.com>, Alex Williams
writes:
> > > PS: I'm also working on the vehicle generator.  I've taken a bunch
of
> > 
> > a) It'd be /nice/ if it ran on some flavour of UNIX I have access
to;
> 
> I'm not sure what the problem here is.  The current program is in
Perl,
> which is widely used on UNIX boxes.  It's a stand alone program which
> is called by a WWW front end.  I've made it available to people who've
> asked for it.  I don't have any plans to make the current version run
> from the command line, although it wouldn't be too difficult, since
the
> web front end is a) easy to use, and b) easy to distribute.

Yipes, pardon me, I was under the mistaken perception we were talking
about a stand-alone program rather than an overhaul  of the current
Web-based one; mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

On the other hand, sometimes I want to put together some DSII vehics
without having to fire up Netscape or Lynx as a frontend and without
having my Net connection up; at times like this it'd be useful to have
it locally on a standalone interface.

> This is the most common request, and will definitely be added.  As to
> describing specifically what the APSW is, you'll have to do that in
> the general description.  Also, the new version gets away from things
> like W-2xHKP/3-FT and has a more human-readable output although the
> "open" format will remain the same except for that.

Excellent, human readability is a Good Thing, you betcha.  :)

Another handy thing to have would be a continuous update of how many
spaces you have left on the building-page instead of having to submit
it to see you've got one too many spaces in use.

Thought number two, have Cargo, Vehicle and Infantry
(Standard/Powered) Storage as an optional declaration; that'd allow
someone, like myself, say, to actually declare such things in the
building process.

> The new version will have the option for something like the
battlecards.
> It won't be a nice, graphical reproduction because I understand
software
> to do that may already be in the works, but it will probably follow a
> similar format.

Now, if only whoever's doing the graphical version will have his
system take /your/ short-format vehicle descriptions as input ... hmmm
...