.tbl editing?

[titanhunter_TcM]

What programs are there that can add strings to the .tbl files for macintosh? Mpqtool just lets you edit the existing ones.

[Joel]

Hmmm you can try the Enquettar scriopt.
It's a perl script that export the tbl into a tab separated file or a TSF into tbl.

[Souricette]

TBL question for TBL experts... If I were to add a "Add TBL entry" feature to my program, what would be the things to ask the user to specify? I guess it would be a 2-fields dialog (one for key, one for value), but is there something I should remember when doing so?
I'm concerned by the <by-index> entries (the ones with with "x" key), and I don't really have a clear vision on what would be required to update them somehow in the patch file, and how I may interfere with them if I was to change inadvertantly the order of the entries in the TBL file...

Souricette

[Joel]

TBL question for TBL experts... If I were to add a "Add TBL entry" feature to my program, what would be the things to ask the user to specify? I guess it would be a 2-fields dialog (one for key, one for value), but is there something I should remember when doing so?
I'm concerned by the <by-index> entries (the ones with with "x" key), and I don't really have a clear vision on what would be required to update them somehow in the patch file, and how I may interfere with them if I was to change inadvertantly the order of the entries in the TBL file...

Souricette

To add an entry , just ask for a key and the value for the entry. then compute the mumbo jumbo needed to insert it into the tbl.

I advice you to NOT add index insertion. The 'x' key are read by hardcoded reference and won't be affected by your 'classic' insertion.
Index insertion however will lead to possible loss of index for those hardcoded key.

A nice feature that is now shared by the 3 major tbl editor for pc ( afj''s, Evil_Peeer's and mine) is to export the tbl into a CVS or tab deleimted file and allwo importing such file.

[Myhrginoc]

If you want to add some sophistication, make the Blizzard keys fixed in position and do whatever you want with added keys. As Joel says, don't affect existing record order, since Blizzard hardcoded everything with an X key and some others besides. (Several keys have non-X names in 1.10 that were X in 1.09, but the references are still by position.) But there is no reason why you can't add, insert, move around, edit and delete the keys a modder puts in after the Blizzard entries.

[kingpin]

There are a lot of hardcoded lookups in both string.tbl and expansionstring.tbl so like already have mentioned don't change the order for existing entries.