BFRPG SRD

[Dustinian]

BFRPG SRD
Background

• Chiisu81 inspired this project.

Result

• BFRPG SRD

Comments

• Based on revision 107.
• Not perfect. I built it by saving the LibreOffice document as .HTML, and then writing a script to clean up the 3+MB monstrosity of redundant, in-tag styles that LibreOffice created.
• I do not intend to host this file once complete. Solomoriah's work belongs on this site. I'm merely hosting temporarily to facilitate development

Help
I'm sharing this now because I'd sincerely appreciate help with the below:

• Stylesheet: I've slapped a basic stylesheet into the head of the document. If there's some design guru that wants to style the current tags (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, p, th, td), that'd be great. Please don't create new tags/classes/ids within the document body. If new tags need to be created, let me know so that I can update the scripts. I want to keep everything script-based so that when Solomoriah posts a new version, I can push-button an updated SRD.
• Errors: LibreOffice did some funky things when it exported the document as .HTML. I found tables in all sorts of weird places. My script also may have omitted too much (or too little). Please let me know what errors you see, and what heading they appear under, so that I can update the script, rather than the document (same reason as above).
• General Feedback: What suggestions do you have? I find it pretty tough to navigate, but I wanted to keep the text as close to the core rules as possible, without inserting a lot of navigation.

Thank you for reading. Now that this is posted, I'll go back to working on my other project... the spell book database application.

[Blazeguard]

Good work.

I had started a couple of wiki-based sites but never got them off the ground.
They may give you some ideas though.
http://bfrpg.wikidot.com/
http://www.schmidthappens.ca/DokuWiki/doku.php

[chiisu81]

I'm quite impressed with what Libre + your clean-up has produced; the only thing I've seen is the use of the "<b>" tag rather than "<strong>".

I've been creating a website for my own rule-set, and I've been tinkering with a stylesheet for it. I can come up with something for your page and see how it looks. One thing I would tweak is the font size; the 9pt Soutane is just too small for my taste.

[Maliki]

Very cool and helpful when working on my modified BFRPG rules. Thanks!

[lars_alexander]

Well done!

[seandon4]

I also wanted to say nicely done, on the clean up

[chiisu81]

I still need to work on a sample CSS for this.

I would like to note that depending on needed bandwidth, my Dreamhost account still has a bit of room if we need a host.

I would also gladly volunteer to pay for website/name registration if Solo approves. Perhaps BFRPGSRD.org or basicfantasySRD.org or such.

[Dustinian]

@chiisu81, I appreciate the offer, but bandwidth is certainly not an issue for now. I also don't think a separate URL is in order. Once I'm ready to call the document "final," the height of my ambition would be to have Solomoriah host it on basicfantasy.org with a link to it somewhere easy to find.

My target audience here are folks with the following use case:

• Gosh, I would love to play a game of BFRPG
• I'm not at home
• I don't have my BFRPG Core Rulebook on me
• I don't have a laptop running LibreOffice on me
• But I totally have a smartphone/tablet!

Those folks could navigate to basicfantasy.org, hit the "SRD" link, and use the SRD from their mobile device.

Granted, the PDF copy of the core rulebook meets the tablet-wielder's most basic needs. But I love the idea of the rules right there in a browser, so that you can use the browser's native resize/zoom/search functionality.

But that's once it's in a more "final" state.

[asacolips]

This is excellent. I was actually just planning on starting a WordPress site as an SRD for this, as I did a similar thing for my home group with Labyrinth Lord. If you're up for it, we might be able to merge those two project ideas and use yours as a base to start from. I could set up the structure and theme, and then you (and any one else interested) could work on getting all of the content in and cleaned up.

Either way, I would definitely like to help on this. I'm an art director and web developer by trade, so I can contribute to it as time allows.

[edit] I just saw your note about keeping it script based so that updates are push button. That would definitely be tricky with WordPress. In that case, here's my thoughts:

• I can put together a really nice stylesheet that's responsive for mobile devices and includes a fixed navigation system, so that the user doesn't have to scroll back to the top.
• All of the table of contents links are static urls like http://www.dustinian.com/stuff#named_anchor. You'll want to strip everything from those URLs aside from the /bfrpg.html#named_anchor portion so that the file will work regardless of the domain.
• Performance on mobile devices is something to consider. With everything being in one .html file, phones have to pull in bits and pieces of the content at a time. It may be wiser to update the script to break each chapter into separate pages
• If you want, you can either give me access to your ftp to upload css files, or I can create a css file on my server and let you reference that in the head of your .html file. Once the css is completed, you can just copy the file over to your server and presto. I prefer the latter, as I would rather not have the ability to ftp in your site (security and all).

[edit 2]
My first crack it this can be seen at http://bfrpg.llsrd.org/. One thing I've noticed is that there really needs to be more classes in the HTML to help with styling specific sections. For instance, I wanted to break the spells into columns so that it would be easier to digest the amount of content there, but there's not a wrapper or class around the chapters so that the content inside them can be styled. With that said, navigation is starting to get quite bit easier now.

[Dustinian]

I was actually just planning on starting a WordPress site as an SRD for this... ...If you're up for it, we might be able to merge those two project ideas and use yours as a base to start from. I could set up the structure and theme, and then you (and any one else interested) could work on getting all of the content in and cleaned up.

I am up for that. Let me know what I can do to help and/or facilitate. I'm not familiar with Wordpress. Would you like the HTML converted to... BBCode? Truly, I'm not familiar with Wordpress at all.

Either way, I would definitely like to help on this. I'm an art director and web developer by trade, so I can contribute to it as time allows.

Thanks. I'm an ex-technical writer. I'm good at single-sourcing and document structure, but I'm terrible (or, at best, generic at true "design"). So the best thing an art director can do for me would be a good stylesheet so that I can stay focused on my document structure, trusting that "look and feel" are taking care of themselves. That would delight me.

I just saw your note about keeping it script based so that updates are push button. That would definitely be tricky with WordPress.

I'm less married to that idea (pure focus on the script) than I was when I posted that.

I can put together a really nice stylesheet that's responsive for mobile devices and includes a fixed navigation system, so that the user doesn't have to scroll back to the top.

That would be awesome.

All of the table of contents links are static urls like http://www.dustinian.com/stuff#named_anchor. You'll want to strip everything from those URLs aside from the /bfrpg.html#named_anchor portion so that the file will work regardless of the domain.

No, the links are relative. Did you look at the document's source, or hover over the hyperlinks? If you hover over, yeah, they look like absolute links. But they're not. I'm a better tech writer than that.

Performance on mobile devices is something to consider. With everything being in one .html file, phones have to pull in bits and pieces of the content at a time. It may be wiser to update the script to break each chapter into separate pages

I had been arriving that that conclusion myself. That's why I'm less married to the script notion than before. My new notion is to break up the document into a bunch of PHP files, and then "include" them into different templates.

If you want, you can either give me access to your ftp to upload css files, or I can create a css file on my server and let you reference that in the head of your .html file. Once the css is completed, you can just copy the file over to your server and presto. I prefer the latter, as I would rather not have the ability to ftp in your site (security and all).

Right now the CSS is embedded in the document. If you could make your changes on the embedded stylesheet and then attach to a subsequent post, that would be ideal. I could then extract your CSS into a separate .CSS file later, one that would work with the PHP break-down I'm thinking of...

My first crack it this can be seen at http://bfrpg.llsrd.org/. One thing I've noticed is that there really needs to be more classes in the HTML to help with styling specific sections. For instance, I wanted to break the spells into columns so that it would be easier to digest the amount of content there, but there's not a wrapper or class around the chapters so that the content inside them can be styled. With that said, navigation is starting to get quite bit easier now.

That's awesome. I should be able to add part/chapter wrappers. Do you prefer divs or these newfangled "article" HTML5 things? Either way, let me know and I can spend some time tonight working on editing the script.

For now, yard work calls. Thank you, asacolips, for the excellent reply and thoughts.

Update: Holy crap, that is super awesome. I hadn't actually tried the TOC when I posted the above. Your TOC is AWESOME. Please let me know how I can continue to facilitate your excellent work.

[asacolips]

I am up for that. Let me know what I can do to help and/or facilitate. I'm not familiar with Wordpress. Would you like the HTML converted to... BBCode? Truly, I'm not familiar with Wordpress at all.

In hindsight, I don't think there's a lot of benefit to using WordPress for this, as that would only make it easier to update the specific issues in the content. And it would add PHP/mySQL database overhead that we don't need. Keeping it in .html files is probably the best route, but we would need to separate them into several individual files, I think. If we were to use a CMS and templating, a lightweight flat file CMS like http://picocms.org/ might work well.

Thanks. I'm an ex-technical writer. I'm good at single-sourcing and document structure, but I'm terrible (or, at best, generic at true "design"). So the best thing an art director can do for me would be a good stylesheet so that I can stay focused on my document structure, trusting that "look and feel" are taking care of themselves. That would delight me.

That works for me.

I'm less married to that idea (pure focus on the script) than I was when I posted that.

I still think it's a valid point though. When I made my first attempt at an SRD, I probably spent a full two period just trying to clean up the content, and it was never completely cleaned up. Breaking it down into scripts like this is a much more forward looking option in the long run.

I can put together a really nice stylesheet that's responsive for mobile devices and includes a fixed navigation system, so that the user doesn't have to scroll back to the top.

That would be awesome.

I've actually started work on both parts of this and there is a mobile/tablet theme in place. For whatever reason I can't get work out why it's not working on actual mobile devices yet, but you can resize your browser window to get an idea of where I'm going with it.

[edit] I've got the mobile and tablet bugs worked out now. I hadn't updated my .html file to include the script files, which prevents the tables from breaking out of the content area. That bug has been resolved, so this is now usable on a mobile or tablet device. Performance is a bit dicey though, like we were expecting.

No, the links are relative. Did you look at the document's source, or hover over the hyperlinks? If you hover over, yeah, they look like absolute links. But they're not. I'm a better tech writer than that.

I goofed. I saved the files locally so that I could work on it until we figure out a better solution, and didn't think about how saving the HTML files would make those links non-relative.

I had been arriving that that conclusion myself. That's why I'm less married to the script notion than before. My new notion is to break up the document into a bunch of PHP files, and then "include" them into different templates.

Like I said up top, the script idea is good and it's only the single .html file that's less than ideal. It should be pretty trivial to do some file working where we can define a generic html portion (maybe the head and footer sections) and then break everything else into chunks. We could then make separate files starting with the generic portion and then copying in the chapter chunks.

Right now the CSS is embedded in the document. If you could make your changes on the embedded stylesheet and then attach to a subsequent post, that would be ideal. I could then extract your CSS into a separate .CSS file later, one that would work with the PHP break-down I'm thinking of...

I'm working on the stylesheet as a separate CSS file now, and I'm toying with a little bit of jQuery/javascript as well (particularly for making the tables usable on mobile screens). If you want to reference those files in your html file, the URLs are below. Once everything is done, we can copy them over to you and then make them relative instead of static and pointing to my server.

Stylesheet: http://bfrpg.llsrd.org/style.css
jQuery 1.11.1: http://bfrpg.llsrd.org/jquery.min.js
Naver: http://bfrpg.llsrd.org/jquery.fs.naver.min.js
Scripts File: http://bfrpg.llsrd.org/script.js

That's awesome. I should be able to add part/chapter wrappers. Do you prefer divs or these newfangled "article" HTML5 things? Either way, let me know and I can spend some time tonight working on editing the script.

For now, yard work calls. Thank you, asacolips, for the excellent reply and thoughts.

Update: Holy crap, that is super awesome. I hadn't actually tried the TOC when I posted the above. Your TOC is AWESOME. Please let me know how I can continue to facilitate your excellent work.

Eh, I could go either way on that. I've used divs more times than I can count, but I've worked with articles and some of the new HTML5 markup quite a bit as well. I'm not too worried about it, as long as we can get some classes on them, like <div class="chapter" id="part_1_introduction"> or the same thing, but as an article.

Also, thanks for the compliments on the TOC. What I'm trying to do is create three separate versions of the TOC, a sidebar dropdown menu on desktop, a 3-column layout on tablet, and a single column full width layout on mobile. Eventually, I'll include a menu button via javascript to show/hide the menu.

[Dustinian]

Keeping it in .html files is probably the best route, but we would need to separate them into several individual files, I think.

Agree. I have an idea to break them up into different files as part of the script. I'll work on this later.

If we were to use a CMS and templating, a lightweight flat file CMS like http://picocms.org/ might work well.

The only CMS I've ever used extensively is RoboHelp (the precursor to "Flare" by MadCap Software. What I'm trying to say is, I'll need you to steer the script output into whatever direction enables the CMS of your choice.

I still think it's a valid point though. When I made my first attempt at an SRD, I probably spent a full two period just trying to clean up the content, and it was never completely cleaned up. Breaking it down into scripts like this is a much more forward looking option in the long run.

Agree. We'll stick to it for now. If it becomes too much of a burden... There are some components that I cleaned up manually (Title Page, TOC), and the script just leaves behind a PHP "include" to include those pre-built manual components. That approach might be a healthy mix.

I've got the mobile and tablet bugs worked out now.

I can't wait to use this in a game.

Performance is a bit dicey though, like we were expecting.

I'm fully aboard with the different files idea. I'm going to start with 1 file per "Part" (rather than going all the way down to "Chapter" right away. But if the approach works, I'll take it down to the "Chapter" level.

I'm working on the stylesheet as a separate CSS file now, and I'm toying with a little bit of jQuery/javascript as well (particularly for making the tables usable on mobile screens). If you want to reference those files in your html file, the URLs are below. Once everything is done, we can copy them over to you and then make them relative instead of static and pointing to my server.

Stylesheet: http://bfrpg.llsrd.org/style.css
jQuery 1.11.1: http://bfrpg.llsrd.org/jquery.min.js
Naver: http://bfrpg.llsrd.org/jquery.fs.naver.min.js
Scripts File: http://bfrpg.llsrd.org/script.js

I will certainly reference the style sheet with the next release. You'll have to school me on referencing the jQuery, Naver, and Scripts file. Or I could send you the raw output of the script and you could host...

I've used divs more times than I can count, but I've worked with articles and some of the new HTML5 markup quite a bit as well. I'm not too worried about it, as long as we can get some classes on them, like <div class="chapter" id="part_1_introduction"> or the same thing, but as an article.

Divs it is. I read The Truth About HTML5 last year, and that book turned me off of Articles and Asides and the like (for now).

Here's my progress:
Modified the script to

• "Div" out the "parts"
• Separate "duration," "range," and "class" components of spells into different classes of p
• Add some whitespace to the HTML so it's a little easier to read

The script takes like 2.5 hours to run (just started it a few minutes ago). And I may need to correct errors, etc. So I'll post updated HTML some time tonight.