feature/form_bbcode

Format for a form field.

I'm a text field //edit me in-place, and I'll update the backing bbcode with the new value

//I'm two out of five checkboxes selected

2 //I'm variable foo with a value of 2

//I'm one out of three checkboxes selected. The value of bar is 1

//I'm a calculation using variables foo+2*bar

I've picked one of my 5e characters and a TftL character as test cases. I've added them to staging's character template repository so people can have a play.



If we get this right, I think this will be an important feature. I hope to make using character sheets feel more like character sheets (rather than a soup of BBCode).



Of course, the soup's still there, but it just moves it more behind the scenes.

We should also be able to edit parts of our character sheets directly from the game page.

It'll take me a while to really understand this code and be able to write my own sheets with it, but just messing with the example sheets, it seems to work well

Agreed. The language is a bit obtuse, but designing languages is hard.

What the feature offers is nice, but maybe we can work on the language spec a bit before we deploy to mainline? It is much harder to change the language after people start using the old version.

If you find something on your character sheet that you want editable then highlight it and press Ctrl+M.

e.g.
Name: Awl
Becomes
Name: Awl
Sure. My reasoning was that _ is small and looks a bit like a text field.

I think this syntax:

Notes

is redundant now that abilities sections are editable and should be removed.

That's pretty awesome

Indeed it is.

I think the [_ could be OK.

Documentation (and Ctrl+M) is required before we can really play with it much.
Removing things can break existing sheets. I am not sure where this [#= structure is used or what it might affect.

We could deprecate the old language, but need to keep it so long as there is even one sheet using it. :(

Getting the language right before people start using it saves a lot of trouble down the road.

The [#= was added in this development for editable blocks (like notes and inventory). It's not live yet and not used yet.

After implementing #= I noticed a user was using the abilities without any internal heading for their sections. Once I noticed this it became apparent that abilities is already a block and in-place abilities editing did what I wanted without the need for the #= tag.

---

This is pretty much the documentation:

I'm a text field //edit me in-place, and I'll update the backing bbcode with the new value
//I'm two out of five checkboxes selected
2 //I'm variable foo with a value of 2
//I'm one out of three checkboxes selected. The value of the bar variable is 1
//I'm a calculation using variables foo+2*bar

---

Calculations support some helper functions.



The functions are:

No problem then. :)

Will play with the sheets when time permits, [_$= looks scary, I worry it will put people off, but I don't have better suggestions.

This is really awesome. Puts a bit more up front work but if a GM can set up a character sheet (or if eventually, we have some sheets stored for most systems that are somewhat common), this will be a huge improvement, especially for new users.

It does, very much, change the landscape of what a 'character sheet' is.

And I worry that it might be a bit too easy to accidentally click on something and change the sheet (necessitating another separate sheet as a record). Maybe it needs a Lock button that disables spurious edits?

It is optional, so people can keep using sheets as (paper) sheets if they don't want the added convenience of in-place editing.

One thought I had for a possible improvement, though it's not at all necessary and I don't know how difficult it would be, is to allow checkboxes with three states. That would be useful for Wildsea for example, where a box can be clear, marked or burned.

How would triphasic checkboxes work? Would you click them again to next to get the next state, and twice more to get back to the current one? How would they look?

That's how I would do it, probably. Cycle through them.
Empty, they could look like they do now. Then checked once, they could be grey with one line through it and checked twice, they could be black with two lines. Or light grey/dark grey. Or checked and then completely filled out. It doesn't matter too much how exactly they look as long as it's not incredibly ugly and you can clearly tell the three states apart

I've replaced all uses of Notes with abilities on my sheets so I think that it shoudn't cause to much of a problem, just make sure to give the others on staging a not that explains what's going on.

Speaking of the Abilities tag though two I've heard two users request that they can use it without the top bar. perhaps a

[abilities=hidetop]

the only challenge with this would be if someone wanted to name the abilities section hidetop or whatever we call it but I don't think there's to much of a risk of that.

Ditto. I think this would be awesome!
I second this.

I've been messing around with these features. They are great!
I notice one minor "bug." I'm not sure it's even worth fixing, but I thought I'd document it.
I've been modifying my Dungeon World custom character sheet (mapdm Character Library and Repository Link). I have some special moves with expanding explanations and rules text. I've updated Arcane Art so it contains a calculated roll from variables in the stat block, so I can use the move easily by clicking the roll.


If I want to add the move's text to the post, I can use the drop-down menu and it is added with spoiler tags.


But when I post it, the calculation of the roll modifier inside the spoiler is only rendered down to the variables.


It might be nice if it renders with the calculated value, mainly because the variable are internal to the sheet, so the creator of the sheet will understand them, but users of the sheet might not understand unless the variable names are well chosen.

I don't think this is a critical fix, but I thought it was worth noting.

I'll keep messing around with the code and see if I notice anything else. But for the most part it's working great!