Re: Python script for mobile platforms -- suggested?
On 8/14/07, Jay Loden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: XML is first and foremost a machine-parseable language, and a human-readable one second ;) I don't think this is particularly hard to read, but then I work with XML configuration files on a daily basis at work, so I may just be a terrible person to ask... I'm not sure I agree that you're not using XML as it was intended; you're mixing data and presentation, but it's still a document containing data. That's what XHTML is, and what the XML document definitions like OOXML are all about. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. My question would be a much simpler why is this XML?. XML makes sense when you need a structured document, and sometimes that makes sense for configuration options or defining a structure, but it's not clear why you'd need it here. Is this something you're intending to make editable by the end user? If you're willing to replace it with Python scripts instead of XML documents, it sounds like maybe you're not worried about letting users edit the menus. If so, why not code the menus direct into the main C++ code? This would be faster, unless you need to frequently edit these menus. I think the best thing to do would be to take a step back and ask what it is that you're trying to do as the end result. What are your requirements; can you expect that Python will be installed already? Is the choice between parsing XML once with C++ or having to ship a Python interpreter with associated overhead? Once you have a set of requirements and determine what's most important to you it should make it easier to pick a solution. For instance, on a mobile device, you might simply not have the spare cycles that embedding a python interpreter would require versus a lightweight lib like TinyXML. Similarly, you'd have to ask yourself if the data is always static, or if you have a need for dynamic content (i.e. embedded scripting) within the menu definition. -Jay Well, Ideally the python script would have a series of callback methods that are triggered when specific predefined events occur in that menu. For example, when the user presses the LEFT key, a callback should be executed in the python script to perform various tasks. So you'd do something like: def OnKeyLeft(): # Do something here... pass However, I think the root of the problem is that I'm editing text files directly to modify the look and feel of menus. Ideally, I'd have a tool that allows a user to visually create a menu by interactively creating controls and assigning them properties through a GUI interface. However, in my specific case I was unable to make a tool due to time restrictions. I could, at the very least, use wxPython to make this tool, which would output menu definitions in XML (which will be non-human readable or editable), or perhaps even binary for quicker parsing by the game. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python script for mobile platforms -- suggested?
Hi Jay, I apologize for not having been detailed enough. Right now I'm using a C++ library known as TinyXML to parse my XML files. When a menu is to be displayed, the XML is parsed and the appropriate images, text, etc that will display on the menu is loaded based on the data in that XML. Note that the XML parsing happens before the menu is drawn and only happens once per menu as to avoid performance overhead during the menu drawing. For example, to create a menu that has an image in the center of the screen, the XML would be this: Page Frame type=Root Frame type=Image value=MyImage.png Origin point=CENTER/ Justification point=CENTER/ /Frame /Frame /Page The Origin and Justification elements act sort of like function calls, and the Frame element defines an Object kind of. Each Frame is a visual element in the Menu. I'm not sure if you'll agree or not, but even in this simple example it's very hard to read just given the nature of the XML syntax. Secondly, I'm not using XML as it was intended to be used. I'm using it as a script instead of a representation of data. Most of the real menus are 600+ lines of XML much like above, however it is not nearly as simplistic. I will paste a real example of a menu below this email for those curious to look at it. I haven't decided on what the Python version of the example above would look like, that would probably happen sometime after I decided to go with Python for a menu scripting replacement (If I do, that is). I might mix XML and Python much like World of Warcraft mixes XML with LUA script. Again, this all depends on design. The important points I wanted to get across is that the Python script wont' be executed past the construction of a menu. The Python/XML script would be simply there to allow the game to create the menu and other important things. I hope I've given enough examples and details. If I haven't, please let me know and I'll answer any questions you may have. Thanks for following up. On 8/13/07, Jay Loden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Robert Dailey wrote: I'm currently developing a game for a cell phone. The game has a GUI system that's currently using XML to define the individual menus. Basically this means that for every single menu the user goes to, it loads and parses an XML file. Would using Python Script instead of XML be a reasonable replacement, or would it be even slower? I've read various articles online but I'm still curious to hear what everyone has to say here. A number of questions come to mind...for starters: 1) What is parsing the XML now? C code? Python? 2) What is the proposed python script supposed to do when they load the menu? without knowing that or seeing some sample code or details, that's an impossible question to answer, since an arbitrary Python script might take milliseconds, seconds, hours, or days to complete running. It might help if you give a concrete example (code is always welcome!) and explained exactly what the options are that you're considering and why. Then the folks on the list can try to give you a rough estimate or possibly suggest alternative methods you may not have considered. -Jay -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python script for mobile platforms -- suggested?
Robert Dailey wrote: Hi Jay, I apologize for not having been detailed enough. Right now I'm using a C++ library known as TinyXML to parse my XML files. When a menu is to be displayed, the XML is parsed and the appropriate images, text, etc that will display on the menu is loaded based on the data in that XML. Note that the XML parsing happens before the menu is drawn and only happens once per menu as to avoid performance overhead during the menu drawing. TinyXML is pretty fast, and I'd wager to say that even without knowing what the Python code would be that replaces the XML, my guess is you'll take a performance (mem/cpu or both) hit, if for no other reason than introducing the Python interpreter overhead. For example, to create a menu that has an image in the center of the screen, the XML would be this: Page Frame type=Root Frame type=Image value=MyImage.png Origin point=CENTER/ Justification point=CENTER/ /Frame /Frame /Page The Origin and Justification elements act sort of like function calls, and the Frame element defines an Object kind of. Each Frame is a visual element in the Menu. I'm not sure if you'll agree or not, but even in this simple example it's very hard to read just given the nature of the XML syntax. Secondly, I'm not using XML as it was intended to be used. I'm using it as a script instead of a representation of data. Most of the real menus are 600+ lines of XML much like above, however it is not nearly as simplistic. I will paste a real example of a menu below this email for those curious to look at it. XML is first and foremost a machine-parseable language, and a human-readable one second ;) I don't think this is particularly hard to read, but then I work with XML configuration files on a daily basis at work, so I may just be a terrible person to ask... I'm not sure I agree that you're not using XML as it was intended; you're mixing data and presentation, but it's still a document containing data. That's what XHTML is, and what the XML document definitions like OOXML are all about. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. My question would be a much simpler why is this XML?. XML makes sense when you need a structured document, and sometimes that makes sense for configuration options or defining a structure, but it's not clear why you'd need it here. Is this something you're intending to make editable by the end user? If you're willing to replace it with Python scripts instead of XML documents, it sounds like maybe you're not worried about letting users edit the menus. If so, why not code the menus direct into the main C++ code? This would be faster, unless you need to frequently edit these menus. I haven't decided on what the Python version of the example above would look like, that would probably happen sometime after I decided to go with Python for a menu scripting replacement (If I do, that is). I might mix XML and Python much like World of Warcraft mixes XML with LUA script. Again, this all depends on design. The important points I wanted to get across is that the Python script wont' be executed past the construction of a menu. The Python/XML script would be simply there to allow the game to create the menu and other important things. I think the best thing to do would be to take a step back and ask what it is that you're trying to do as the end result. What are your requirements; can you expect that Python will be installed already? Is the choice between parsing XML once with C++ or having to ship a Python interpreter with associated overhead? Once you have a set of requirements and determine what's most important to you it should make it easier to pick a solution. For instance, on a mobile device, you might simply not have the spare cycles that embedding a python interpreter would require versus a lightweight lib like TinyXML. Similarly, you'd have to ask yourself if the data is always static, or if you have a need for dynamic content (i.e. embedded scripting) within the menu definition. -Jay -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python script for mobile platforms -- suggested?
*bump* On 8/12/07, Robert Dailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I'm currently developing a game for a cell phone. The game has a GUI system that's currently using XML to define the individual menus. Basically this means that for every single menu the user goes to, it loads and parses an XML file. Would using Python Script instead of XML be a reasonable replacement, or would it be even slower? I've read various articles online but I'm still curious to hear what everyone has to say here. Thanks. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python script for mobile platforms -- suggested?
Robert Dailey wrote: I'm currently developing a game for a cell phone. The game has a GUI system that's currently using XML to define the individual menus. Basically this means that for every single menu the user goes to, it loads and parses an XML file. Would using Python Script instead of XML be a reasonable replacement, or would it be even slower? I've read various articles online but I'm still curious to hear what everyone has to say here. A number of questions come to mind...for starters: 1) What is parsing the XML now? C code? Python? 2) What is the proposed python script supposed to do when they load the menu? without knowing that or seeing some sample code or details, that's an impossible question to answer, since an arbitrary Python script might take milliseconds, seconds, hours, or days to complete running. It might help if you give a concrete example (code is always welcome!) and explained exactly what the options are that you're considering and why. Then the folks on the list can try to give you a rough estimate or possibly suggest alternative methods you may not have considered. -Jay -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Python script for mobile platforms -- suggested?
Hi, I'm currently developing a game for a cell phone. The game has a GUI system that's currently using XML to define the individual menus. Basically this means that for every single menu the user goes to, it loads and parses an XML file. Would using Python Script instead of XML be a reasonable replacement, or would it be even slower? I've read various articles online but I'm still curious to hear what everyone has to say here. Thanks. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
