Hello Devs/IC/Stardock...

I was wondering if you would be willing to open source ConvertData.exe?  I am writing a full-featured Mod Manager for Sins and I am rolling my own code to parse the various entity files into classes.  Not difficult, just tedious... I am just curious if you have any particular way you parse the files.

Any info would be appreciated!

On a related subject, my mod file pipeline basically goes as so:

• TXT or BIN parsed into classes only once when mod project is created
  
• Classes serialized to one single XML mod project file (BTW - this reduces file size by over 50%)
• On deployment:
  • Only changed classes are parsed back out to TXT or BIN to the deployment folder...  OR:
    
  • Selected mod project XML file is deserialized and parsed back out to necessary files (i'm looking at using a single XSLT transform to do this)

I won't go deeply into what I see as the benefits of an XML mod file format, but how hard would it be to switch to an XML format?

Some quick benefits:

• MUCH easier to parse, query, edit, etc
• Readable, commentable
• Easier to work with in code in general
• Serializable
• Easy to validate (schema)

Any thoughts from devs or technie type users?

I'll have a MUCH longer thread regarding my Mod Manager project out soon.

Cheers!