RFC - TlkEdit project git repo

Calgacus

I made a git repo of the TlkEdit project. I am hoping to expand on the project, any input is welcome.
Is this tool still considered useful or are there much better ways to work with 2da, uti, tlk files without it?
2DA, uti and tlk editing can still be a tedious affair for even small changes - for example I recently changed the name the Kama to Pick and needed to change the custom tlk entry, the uti file and the baseitems.2da file just to do that. Later I made a bunch of changes to a bunch of items and the process was error prone even with this tool.

The git repo is at TlkEdit.

My first task is simply to get this project building and making the .exe files again from edited source. If anyone has any experience with this project and would like to help me get going with it please let me know. I am not yet sure I have it all set up right or know how to build and run it in full: for instance when I run the TlkEdit configuration I get this error message:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 0
	at org.jl.nwn.tlk.editor.TlkEdit.main(TlkEdit.java:1215)

Process finished with exit code 1

My problem now lies in knowing how to work with all these tools - intellij idea, launch4j, whatever build system is in use, etc, rather than with java code with which I have some previous experience.

Calgacus

The launch4j stuff is optional and without it then the app will run with the 64 bit java via the command line:

java -jar tlkedit.jar

However the ant build script is failing to create a new jar, I keep getting this message:

C:\Users\...\TlkEdit-EE\out\production\TlkEdit\build.xml:79: Manifest file: C:\Users\...\TlkEdit-EE\out\production\src\meta-inf\manifest.mf does not exist.

Calgacus

I had failed to include the lib folder at first import in the repo but it's there now. On windows I still get that manifest error but on macOS I do not and can produce the jar there and it works.

Calgacus

YAY!! My first minor tweaks are up - first I widened the StrRef column in the tlkeditor so you can see the full number after a modification causes that * to cram out the last 3 digits,
- and two I included the missing en_US dictionary for spell checks.

I doubt I will support executable files created with launch4j, it just seems unnecessary and I'm not sure there is a way to make 64 bit executables.

Calgacus

Uploaded a few more tweaks like resize-able 2da columns and fix for a bug that might have prevented some 2da metadata from loading and helping inline popup editors from working on certain columns like baseitems.2da "Equipable Slots" column.

Calgacus

Is anyone using this tool anymore? I put the git-repo up a while back and heard nothing until yesterday when a contributor started doing pull requests. Is work on this tool still useful to anyone?

shadguy

I use it regularly for 1.69 .TLK, .2da, and manual .gff edits.

I appreciate the work by yourself and the original author. I occasionally wonder about developing more content in the meta subdir to document more of the common 2da field edits, but I've never actually started experimenting with anything to actually do that, mostly do to other priorities grabbing my attention.

-Dave

WilliamDraco

I use the original out of ignorance of this update, which I'll swap over now. So definitely still useful to me, although I lack creativity for which improvements might be useful at the moment.

Arvirago

Thanks @Calgacus ! Now I can use TlkEdit with my Ubuntu Mate! This tool is great

Madwack

I just back in playing NWN and I needed a TLK editor....

Downloading now

Cheers

ShadowM

Can we get it to grab columns copy and paste like 2daEdit program that for some reason does not work anymore.

Calgacus

I'm not familiar with 2daEdit so can you give me a better idea of what you are looking for - primary use case, etc?

WilliamDraco

An example recently might be with the update of various .2da's as new features are added by beamdog. It would be handy to be able to copy-paste the new columns into the various custom .2da's servers already have.

TarotRedhand

@WilliamDraco You do know that you could do that with notepad++'s column mode (assuming you are on windows).

TR

ShadowM

TarotRedhand wrote: »

@WilliamDraco You do know that you could do that with notepad++'s column mode (assuming you are on windows).

TR

Yes I know about notepad++ and column mode and 2daEdit 0.63 work way easier and better, I trying to find the original download but it looks like it got lost in time. I have the program, but it it give me this error

Error #5 - Invalid procedure call or argument
Function - sTruncatedFullPath

If someone can fix it or tell me how to fix it, I be thankful.

ShadowM

Calgacus wrote: »

I'm not familiar with 2daEdit so can you give me a better idea of what you are looking for - primary use case, etc?

It let you click on the column head name and select the whole column down and then you can just use copy and paste to other columns with options to fill with ***** or add column with just + symbol and type in the header. You can add new columns with tlkedit but it kinda clunky with the table alter box.

WilliamDraco

TarotRedhand wrote: »

@WilliamDraco You do know that you could do that with notepad++'s column mode (assuming you are on windows).

TR

I'm aware of other ways to do it, I was stating a use-case for including the function in Tlkedit as requested by Calgacus.

TarotRedhand

@Calgacus If you are interested there is an older tlk-editing program up on github written in C#. Even though the source was only uploaded there last February, it says this on the page -

This repository has been archived by the owner. It is now read-only.

It is located here.

TR