Let's say the folks behind each major product/tool allocates someone to participate on this standards team. So yet more work is needed to find a balance, which means lots more time. The former is unwieldy and the latter is useless to everyone. All of these issues need to be reconciled, typically resulting in either a standard that tries to do everything or the lowest common denominator. Due to these differing objectives, they have different priorities and requirements. You end up with lots of different stakeholders, and each has different objectives for their particular products. Coming up with a standard takes lots of time. For the "big boys", they might have full-time staff, but you can count the size of their development teams for a given product on one hand - and still have fingers left over. Heck, many of the full-fledged companies writing software for this industry are staffed by predominantly part-timers. Consequently, lots of the software is written by part-timers and/or volunteers. This industry is tiny, so there's not much money to be made in it. In addition to LazarX's insightful points, there is another key factor to consider. It would be great if the standard gave meaningful feedback so that applications could be writ smart enough to say "Beneficent Weasel-master Feat doesn't validate, rule referenced *here*" with a link. Y'see, while that may play havoc with validation, it's not like a character changes to suit the software it's imported to. And I firmly believe house rules should be supported, which may mean that each object needs a rule reference URL (the PRD, d20pfsrd, or someone's house rule page). This would, presumably, be the same (or similar to) the way House Rules are handled. Your point is really important, there needs to be a defined error for imports that aren't supported by the destination app. Standards won't (and oughtn't to) necessarily work with what exists, they're there for future developers to comply with, and for existing ones to patch toward, right? That's what I'd like to - You're right as well. It's complex, and I'm not saying it /will/ go that way, but standards can create pressure that benefits the users. and if Roll20 (or anyone else) picks up the standard? At that point, it's in HeroLab's interest to pick it up as well, or at least bridge it over to their standard. For example, what becomes of HeroLab if someone comes onto the scene with a HTML5-JS character database that has Roll20's user-friendliness (and general prettiness). But they also emerge from new developments that then benefit from interoperability and force the laggards to get onboard. Open standards don't "only work when companies get together at the start of a branch of technology". ![]() But we can combine the "business logic" of Pathfinder with some standard object types, and say "gee wouldn't it be nice if you supported this?" That's why we can't expect them to define a standard. I can understand why the individual application developers don't see much value in it, but if we fans define the standard and petition them to use it, mayhaps they - There's truth in this. It's a really good idea, but I don't see it happening anywhere but here. You could then import that into your character management system, or into a MapTool framework that parses JSON (the functions are all in there.) I would be 1000% more excited if I had something like this API that I knew would get support to work with other people's stuff.Ĭonsider if a random treasure generator had the option to output JSON objects in an OpenPF format. I've taken a lot of database courses in the last few months, and imagining PF applications is the only thing that kept me conscious during the whole ordeal. I've been thinking about creating some web-based character management tools, lately. ![]() The players have a good sense of what is needed. If at least one or two knowledgeable other people get involved in the discussion, I'm sure we can at least make a foundation. I'm really interested in doing something, but I'm really an extroverted technologist. Elorebaen wrote: Some tech-savvy folks could really do something big here, if they came up with a plan and presented it to Paizo.
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