Draken wrote:
Sounds like a good editing plan to me! The simpler/cleaner way is usually the best… However, I feel for you having to edit out all those annoying code strings. That said, even with the weird spacing around the names, those pics on the main site look mighty fine.
Yep, but I bet the most noticeable spacing aberrations will drive Red Soul nuts! He and Recca are the reasons I tossed so many in B. H.! They both preferred uniform color shading with the [red] codes.
Now, I do have one instance I can fix. This is the colon after the speaker at the top left of screens - when present. With some names, the colon appears normally spaced - that is - no space between it and the name. In others, the control codes and VWF somehow place the colon further to the right of the name, making it appear that a writer has hit the space bar after the name.
The fix here (already implemented in 50% of Aretha-II) is to place the colon inside the control codes. This means the colon takes on the color of the name, but at least it's in its natural position.
Here are examples of the variations possible when the colon is placed outside the control codes.
I believe the gap occurs in the Elder string because the "l" is narrow and the routine adds in the "left over" space between the "r" and the colon.
"Samantha", however contains no thin letters, and the colon appears spaced more normally.
If my theory is correct, the same problem seems to occur before the name "Jack". The comma before "Jack" is narrow, and the extra space seems to be "added in".
The question mark following Jack could be pulled in closer by placing it inside the control codes, but that wouldn't look right to many (a pink question mark).
As I said, if someone wants perfect spacing, go with either no color, a fixed width font, or redesign the routine to "slick this up pretty"!
Aretha-II's example shows the pink colon next to the pink name with normal spacing - which I believe is the best trade-off. If you agree, I'll go back and set all of the Aretha (I) colons that way, too. As you may recall, the colon replaces Matt's double quote that replaced the Japanese quote mark that was placed outside of the color codes to the right of the second set of those code pairs that bracket every name that displays with colored text.
Also, regarding Aretha-II, the developers gave generic names: man, woman, boy, girl, dog, cat, etc. to all townies and color-coded them.
Aretha (I) does not have that added features. People in towns just start talking, dogs barking, etc. These could be manually introduced in Aretha (I) - a lot of work - but they look nice to me in Aretha-II.
Another alteration I introduced in Aretha-II was to use blue-colored text only the first time a name was introduced in the body of a string or to emphasize that colored name again, occasionally, in certain places for clues and/or to foreshadow action. This cleaned up hundreds of "space" glitches in one swoop. Then again, I could manipulate the worst gaps, sometimes, by typing no spaces between the brackets for the color codes and adjacent words. If I had tried to do this with thousands of colored name repeats, fooling with the spaces endlessly would have driven me crazy. They wouldn't have been uniform anyway, and Red Soul would have caught every one that was off by 1/10,000 of an inch!
I did not, however, eliminate any pink-colored speakers names in Aretha-II. As mentioned, putting the colon inside the color codes fixed that spacing issue. Finally, notice that "Port City of Mulintz" spaces nicely because the first and last words contain no narrow characters. Also, whenever I can arrange a colored text word at the beginning or end of a line, all is well. I have actually changed the syntax in many instances of Aretha-II for the purpose of slicker spacing. It can be a real pain folks, to try to make everything as perfect as possible.
BTW, I've divided Aretha into about 105 chapters. This does not include instances wherein Ritchie says, "Pass through this desert or return to that forest just to keep transiting onward to a town," or what-have-you, where something actually happens that propels the game forward. A chapter is moving directly into a new or previously visited area where something new indeed happens. This is far and away the most chapters I've encountered. Usually, our projects run between 40 and 60 chapters, but many of Aretha's chapters appear to be "quickies" compared to Lodoss, for example. So, we'll see...