Image non-HTML

[CourtFool]

Is llama missing something? Can you not put an image in an export template unless that export template is HTML?

[Simon]

Originally posted by CourtFool
Is llama missing something? Can you not put an image in an export template unless that export template is HTML?
Depends entirely on the format that you're using.

Plain text (obviously) does not have any support for embedded images....other formats do.

The current version of HD will support external image references.....future versions or updates can be made to include binary image inclusions as necessary....

[CourtFool]

Llama is creating a template in MS Word. Would you please point llama in the right direction for how to insert a character image. Llama tried <--!IMAGE--><--!/IMAGE--> but to no avail.

[Simon]

Originally posted by CourtFool
Llama is creating a template in MS Word. Would you please point llama in the right direction for how to insert a character image. Llama tried <--!IMAGE--><--!/IMAGE--> but to no avail.
You will need to know whatever format you're trying to create an export template for.

If I understand you right, you're creating a .doc template. This is fine...and would likely be quite useful for some folks. But you'll need to know the .doc format in order to create this template. HD's export structure simply swaps out a series of predefined strings (the tags for export) with values from the character. That and a little bit of logical structure (looping, conditional checks, etc) is about all there is to it.

I don't personally know the file format used by Word. For that matter, I'm not terribly familiar with RTF formats. HTML I'm pretty fluent in, so I could certainly tell you how to insert an image in HTML (just use an &lt;img ... &gt; tag), but in a Word document, you're on your own, I'm afraid.

[Simon]

I may be misinterpreting what you're talking about (it would help if you dropped the use of the third person and simply posted a normal question)....

If you're asking what the export tags are to get at the image, &lt;!--IMAGE--&gt; and &lt;!--/IMAGE--&gt; are basically the conditional block for an image....if an image has been defined, then the contents of that container will be included...otherwise, they'll be replaced with an empty string.

&lt;!--IMAGE_RELATIVE_URL--&gt; gives you the location(relative to your document) of the image file.

[CourtFool]

What does third person perspective have to do with it? :p

Ohhhhhhh! I think I follow what you are saying. I have just created a word document and saved it with the extension .hde. I am going to have to open it in notepad or somesuch and look at the formating code to figure out how to insert the image. Well poop.

Llama thanks you for your help. (Translation for third person impaired: I thank you for your help)

[Simon]

Originally posted by CourtFool
What does third person perspective have to do with it? :p

Ohhhhhhh! I think I follow what you are saying. I have just created a word document and saved it with the extension .hde. I am going to have to open it in notepad or somesuch and look at the formating code to figure out how to insert the image. Well poop.

Llama thanks you for your help. (Translation for third person impaired: I thank you for your help)
I still don't think you're understanding the process.

A .hde file is just an export template for HD. An export template can be in any ascii-based format that you want (rtf, html, txt, pdf, xml, etc). The file format that you end up with after the export is determined solely by the export template itself. All HD does is swap out values within the template and save it in the format that you specify.

So, if you wanted an RTF export template, you would create the template using the RTF format, placing the HD export "tags" wherever you wanted HD to swap in values. If you wanted an HTML export template, you would create the template using straight HTML, again placing the HD export tags wherever you wanted HD to swap in values.

It doesn't matter what text editor you use to create a template....it can be anything from Notepad to Word to vi....so long as it saves the file in the format that you want, you're good to go.

Hopefully this will help with any confusion.

[CourtFool]

:( Now I am more confused.

If I put <--!IMAGE--><--!/IMAGE--> where I want the character picture to appear in my document, it should appear there when I export correct?

In the HTML export templates, I noticed that the HTML IMG tag is used and then the HeroDesigner URL reference tag is used to populate the location of the image. I have an image that I loaded to HeroDesigner. I want the export template to use that image. I hope to not make a reference to an outside file. The only thing I can think of is that I mistyped the image tag or something.

[Simon]

Originally posted by CourtFool
:( Now I am more confused.

If I put <--!IMAGE--><--!/IMAGE--> where I want the character picture to appear in my document, it should appear there when I export correct?

No. As stated above, the IMAGE container is simply a check. It's contents are included only if an image has been assigned. HD doesn't swap anything else in for it. It should probably be renamed to IF_IMAGE to be a bit clearer.



In the HTML export templates, I noticed that the HTML IMG tag is used and then the HeroDesigner URL reference tag is used to populate the location of the image. I have an image that I loaded to HeroDesigner. I want the export template to use that image. I hope to not make a reference to an outside file. The only thing I can think of is that I mistyped the image tag or something.
Currently all you have available for the export of the image is the reference to the file.

It's certainly possible for me to create a tag to allow you to get a dump of the binary data from the image file....I believe that I had mentioned it as a possibility in a thread some time ago (not sure how long...I think we were talking about PDFs at the time).

If you need a binary dump, then I can work a tag in for the next update....but it will simply be a binary inclusion of the data from the image file (byte for byte)....if you need something other than this, we'll need to talk about it a bit.

[CourtFool]

Ah! I understand now. I do not think the binary dump would work for my purposes. I will have to figure out how MS Word wants the reference and include the character portrait with any saved characters.

Thank you for your patience and quick responses. You have been a big help. I was hesitant to purchase HeroDesigner being a MetaCreator advocate. Now I am glad I converted.

[Simon]

Originally posted by CourtFool
Ah! I understand now. I do not think the binary dump would work for my purposes. I will have to figure out how MS Word wants the reference and include the character portrait with any saved characters.

Thank you for your patience and quick responses. You have been a big help. I was hesitant to purchase HeroDesigner being a MetaCreator advocate. Now I am glad I converted.
I'll get the binary dump ready for the next update. Figure on it being IMAGE_DATA for the tag. The format for now will be just JPG. Long term, however, this will be expanded to JPG, GIF, or PNG. Unless I'm mistaken, the binary data from the files also contains an indicator of the type, so hopefully this won't be an issue.

Let me know once you find out of this will work for you....

[Simon]

By the way...once you get this working, make sure you send a copy of the template to Ben for posting to the Free Stuff page....I'm sure that there's a lot of folks who would find an export template that combines the image data with the character file itself to be extremely handy.

[CourtFool]

If I can get it to work. :D