A Tip for Newbie GUI Authors...

[Syllani]

I'm currently tackling the creation of an options configuration GUI for my Alerter mod (will upload here for the next version... when the GUI is done). It's the first GUI I've ever tried creating, and boy can it be a pain to debug sometimes.

I'd like to share a tip that will hopefully save some of the rest of you a few hours of grief.
Get an XML parser/linter ASAP!!! I've only found one specifically designed for WoW XML, and it's called AddonEditor (google to find it on curse-gaming or worldofwar).

The reason this will save you hours of troubleshooting is simple. If your XML file contains one little tiny error (such as leaving out an '=', doh), nothing in the XML file will load. And then you'll wonder why you're getting all kind of strange Lua errors in your OnLoad routine... well, yeah, if your Lua is referring to a frame which wasn't loaded, Error!

So yeah. That's my mod author tip of the day. Hope it helps someone... otherwise I'll look like a flaming n00b.

[Littlejohn]

FIrefox works fine for me. Internet Explorer can even display it ok. The XML isn't really that bad as XML goes.

[Syllani]

Originally Posted by Littlejohn FIrefox works fine for me. Internet Explorer can even display it ok. The XML isn't really that bad as XML goes.

You know, I actually didn't think of that. *blush*

In my defense though, that AddOnEditor thingy can actually check against UI.xsd (provided you've extracted it out of the mpq), so it can flag things like relativeto versus relativeTo

I'm the first to admit that I don't know everything and have a lot to learn about UI modding!

[Inokis]

If you're hung up on syntax and don't know what the problem is, or you're just missing an error and can't seem to see it, neither firefox nor IE are going to help much, you're best to go with a debugger as you are doing

[Littlejohn]

The main problems I have with frame layout are wrong relative positions, offsets, and sizes. My XML syntax is fine, but the frames end up off screen or where ever it is that frames go when they are unhappy.

Does anybody have a GUI layout tool with a graphical preview? Even better would be a frame layout builder. I used to use a tool called UIM/X for doing X11 Motif layouts. It drew little chains between the "frame" attach points. Something like that for WoW would be awesome.