Hack 

Hack is a lightweight notebook and/or code development addon.

Hack makes it easy to manage a large collection of notes/scripts and share them with other Hack users. Pages containing Lua code can be run and/or flagged to auto-run on startup; they can call other pages, passing arguments and receiving return values. This lets Hack serve as an in-game file system for Lua scripts.

OPTIONAL:

Hack includes several example pages. They are easily deleted from within Hack, or you can prevent them from ever being loaded by deleting HackExamples.lua from the Hack folder.

Hack itself is lightweight (<60KB), but it includes a library for highlighting/indenting Lua code (FAIAP) which will add some additional memory usage and garbage generation. It's not a big deal, but if you just use Hack as a notebook and never edit Lua code, feel free to delete Indent.lua from the Hack directory.

IMPORT:

Hack's example pages include scripts to import pages from Tinypad, Nefpad, WowLua, and LuaSlinger. LuaSlinger supports triggering pages by events, and the importer shows how easily you can wire up the same functionality in Hack.

If you have another notepad addon you want to pull pages from, lemme know.

USAGE:

/hack -- toggle Hack UI
/hack <hack name> -- run a Hack page by name

The UI is mostly self-explanatory (mouse over buttons to see what they do), but a few things deserve special mention:

1. To run the current page as Lua code, click the 'play' button at the top of edit window (this one) or hit SHIFT+TAB from the editor.

2. To make a page run automatically when Hack loads, click the 'play' button next to it's name in the list window. This makes Hack useful for little tweaks that don't warrant a full-blown addon. For instance, I hate the mail font. It's easy to fix, but I don't want to write a whole addon for two lines of code, so I type the lines into a Hack page and flag it to execute. Done.

NOTES:

* Pages are saved as you type and there is no undo, so be careful. If you really screw up a page, you can hit the Revert button, which will give you back the page as it was when you first opened it.

* The list frame and edit frame are resizable. Just grab the little handle in the bottom right corner.

* You can double-click a page name to rename it (in addition to using the rename button).

* Page search is case insensitive. You use a subset of regex search patterns (^$.*-+?).

* Autorun pages run in the order they appear, so you can control their execution order by moving them up and down the list.

EXAMPLES:

I included example pages to show how I use Hack. You can delete these quickly via the books tab. To speed Hack's loading, remove HackExamples.lua from the addon folder.

The "lib:" pages contain library code I find useful in many scripts. To facilitate the use of libraries, Hack contains one built-in function Hack.Require, which can be used to make sure a page you are dependent on is loaded, while preventing it from being loaded more than once.

The arg processing examples show how you can execute a page by name, optionally passing arguments and/or receiving return values.

The "timer lib" examples show how to use "lib: timer".

The "cmd:" examples add new slash commands to the game.

The "ui:" examples are various minor tweaks to the UI.

The "hack:" examples are bits of code I used to write Hack. Saves you a lot of reloading to develop with a tool like this.

FEEDBACK:

I'd love to get feedback about Hack. What you like, what you don't like, what you'd like to see in future versions (keeping in mind that my intention is to keep it as small as possible).

Cheers,
Eric Tetz
<[email protected]>