LuaTexts Official Thread

[jokeyrhyme]

Originally Posted by somaru

...Can I have some lua text and some dogtags and still see a performance increase?
...

Mixing LuaTexts and DogTags is what I imagine many of us did while we switched over. LuaTexts does require you to either hunt through this thread for code or learn a little Lua, but if you've done any programming before it should be relatively straight-forward. The beauty of the way Shefki has given us LuaTexts, is that there is already plenty of example code in the defaults. Just look at your texts one at a time, look at the default LuaTexts version and mess around with it.

I would hope even players who have never touched code before take a look at LuaTexts and experiment. If you have customised your DogTags, you are already a programmer! Who knows, maybe LuaTexts will be your window into the exciting and rewarding world of addon creation! Go forth and Lua! :P

[somaru]

thank you! I have switched health over so far and it really seemed to make a big difference. I also switched over my buff display so I can see only hots and beacon of light and sacred shield and that seemed to go okay although I might try to figure out how to consolidate all the Healing over time spells into just one icon if any of them are present.

I was working on my debuffs and I definately can figure out how to do slag pot, etc... and am okay with those displaying as an icon.

However, for poison, magic, curse, and disease I have a custom dog tag to show these as little colored asterix.

[(if HasPoisonDebuff = true then
    "*":Green
end) (if HasMagicDebuff = true then
    "*":Color("00BFFF")
end) (if HasDiseaseDebuff = true then
    "*":Yellow
end) (if HasCurseDebuff = true then
    "*":Fuchsia
end)]

From what I can see here: http://www.wowace.com/projects/pitbu...ges/lua-texts/ there is nothing like that for the lua texts?

thanks again!

[jokeyrhyme]

There is frame and/or border highlighting for each of those. I think if you want to do it with LuaTexts, you'll probably need to loop through all 40 possible auras with UnitDebuff()
Here's the basic framework for such a loop, I think you get the idea.

for i=1,40 do
  local type = UnitDebuff(unit, i, false)
  if type == "Poison" then
    -- do your poison colouring thing here
  end
  -- branch for other debuff types Magic, Disease, Curse...
end
-- use your colour on the asterisk

Note that this is probably the most awful way to do this, I haven't messed around with UnitAura/Buff/Debuff much. Just looking at this, the fact that the loop is run for every frame you put this LuaText on, it just looks terribly inefficient (although I think that DogTag you gave probably does a similar loop 4 times, so it's alot better).

Just remember that you need to have the right events toggled for this to be updated properly: UNIT_AURA

[Shefki]

Originally Posted by jokeyrhyme

There is frame and/or border highlighting for each of those. I think if you want to do it with LuaTexts, you'll probably need to loop through all 40 possible auras with UnitDebuff()

a) There is no 40 limit anymore so see the example code further back where I did it without a fixed limit.

b) I'd encourage you to use UnitAura() now. UnitDebuff() is just a wrapper for it anyway. No reason to incur an extra function call just to figure out the options for you. UnitDebuff(unit, i) == UnitAura(unit, i, "HARMFUL")

[Shefki]

Originally Posted by jokeyrhyme

although I think that DogTag you gave probably does a similar loop 4 times, so it's alot better

It actually doesn't there's a cache in DogTags for this.

[Ajuga]

I've started a thread about LuaTexts on the Elitist Jerks forum. Feel free to stop by

Link

[jh032008]

Is there any way of returning a Classification without the need for a gap if the target is a normal mob? At the moment I'm using the following for target class text:

if UnitIsPlayer(unit) then
  return "Level %s %s %s",Level(unit),SmartRace(unit),Class(unit)
else
  return "Level %s %s %s",Level(unit),Classification(unit) or '',SmartRace(unit)
end

For example, when selecting an elite mob, the text will read 'Level 80 Elite Humanoid', but when selecting a normal mob, it reads 'Level 80 Humanoid' with two spaces in the middle. I realise this is probably because of the [or ''] part of the code, but if I remove that, the class text only prints as {err}. I've got practically zero experience with Lua, so any help will be appreciated mightily.

[Shefki]

Originally Posted by Ajuga

I've started a thread about LuaTexts on the Elitist Jerks forum. Feel free to stop by

Link

Thank you.

[Shefki]

Originally Posted by jh032008

Is there any way of returning a Classification without the need for a gap if the target is a normal mob? At the moment I'm using the following for target class text:

if UnitIsPlayer(unit) then
  return "Level %s %s %s",Level(unit),SmartRace(unit),Class(unit)
else
  return "Level %s %s %s",Level(unit),Classification(unit) or '',SmartRace(unit)
end

For example, when selecting an elite mob, the text will read 'Level 80 Elite Humanoid', but when selecting a normal mob, it reads 'Level 80 Humanoid' with two spaces in the middle. I realise this is probably because of the [or ''] part of the code, but if I remove that, the class text only prints as {err}. I've got practically zero experience with Lua, so any help will be appreciated mightily.

I'd do it like so:

if UnitIsPlayer(unit) then
  return "Level %s %s %s",Level(unit),SmartRace(unit),Class(unit)
else
  local classification = Classification(unit)
  if classification then
    return "Level %s %s %s",Level(unit),classification,SmartRace(unit)
  else
    return "Level %s %s",Level(unit),SmartRace(unit)
  end
end

It's somewhat annoying to do it that way but it's better because it avoids the garbage creation of concatentating a space onto Classification.

[jokeyrhyme]

I'd be more inclined to create separate LuaTexts for each of Level, Classification and Race. That way, PitBull's layout system will automatically put spacing in there. I do have to wonder though if the spacing around texts/indicators is properly omitted for empty/absent ones, but everything looks fine on my layout.

Separate but properly ordered texts means you have (what I feel is) better mirror behaviour. If you always want Race to be closer to the centre of the frame than Level, no matter what way 'round the frame is mirrored, then this is the way to accomplish that. Of course, if you don't mirror horizontally for some frames then it's neither here nor there.