Overview manipulation: Difference between revisions

[[image:overview_manipulation.png|thumb|Most people edit the overview file to change the appearances of the '''tabs''' and the '''labels'''.]]

While you can make any number of changes to the overview through the .yaml file, almost all of the things that can be changed ingame is much easier and more reliable to change ingame, with the exception of changing colours, font sizes, styles etc of the tab names and the ship labels / brackets in space.

The ''Overview Tabs'' settings ingame will allow you to add html-formatting, but most people prefer to edit this outside the client anyway due to the highly restrictive input fields. It's much easier to edit those values in a proper text-editor than trying to do it in a tiny little window that shows but a few letters at a time.

Whenever you select a target or hover over a bracket in space you'll get some information about the entity. By manipulating the .yaml file you can customize this to show the information in different colours, font sizes or even with personalized linebreaks etc. These changes will affect your combat notifications as well and show the parts regarding players and player owned entities appropriately formatted, which is an added bonus that leads to improved readability of onscreen combat messages. If you decide to add manual linebreaks or other formatting code, be sure to check that the onscreen combat messages are still readable.

The easiest way to manipulate your overview is to save your current overview and then export it into your documents folder. Then you can open the overview file in a text editor and quickly view your changes ingame by saving the file and importing the new settings. That way you can easily tinker with your overview until you have it just the way you like it.

You can set up your initial overview while still being safely docked in a station. To open your overview settings without being in space you can use the channel-command {{co|violet|/open overview settings}} or by setting up a [[Keyboard_controls#Modifying_Shortcuts|shortcut]] for your '''Overview Settings''' window (you'll find it in the escape menu's '''Shortcuts''' tab under '''Window''').

You will still need to undock in order to verify and get used to your new overview settings, but this way you can avoid actually being in space while alt-tabbed or fiddling with your game menus.

Open your ''Overview Settings'' window and go to the ''Misc'' tab. At the bottom of the tab you'll see two button, ''Import Overview Settings'' and ''Export Overview Settings''. It's '''highly recommended''' that you start by making a backup of your settings by exporting them into one file first, before making another export with another name, with the intention of using the second copy as a work-in-progress file.

The files will end up in your personal Documents folder along with screenshots, chatlogs etc (not to be confused with the application data folder where your other settings are stored). The folder is created automatically the first time you export your settings, so normally you won't have to do that yourself.

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The overview is saved in the .yaml file format and can be edited in pretty much any kind of text-editor, like the commonly used [https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ Notepad++], but of course the standard notepad editor that comes comes with Windows works as well. Simply right-click the file and open it with your favourite text-editor to start editing. The majority of the changes you're likely to make (tab and label edits) will be at the very end of the file.

{| style="font-size:90%;"

| valign="top" |

       - null

     - - name

     - - overview

- - 1  {{co|lightgreen|-- Second tab.}}

   - - - bracket

       - null

     - - name

     - - overview

{{co|lightgreen|-- Skipping to the next interesting part.}}

</pre&lt;noinclude&gt;&lt;/noinclude&gt;>

|}

You can easily purge or load new settings while, but in order for the new settings to take full effect (especially ship labels) you'll need to load a tab that doesn't have ships or player owned entities on them (to sort of "purge" them from memory) and then swap back to a tab that does show them. Once you do that, the new settings will be in full effect.

The '''podsaver''' tab is excellent for this, as it shouldn't contain any player entities, so swapping to the podsaver and back everytime you reload your settings should be enough.

By opening up the '''Overview Settings''' page and going to the various tabs you can quickly change some of this directly. The '''Tab Name''' text-field on the '''Overview Tabs''' page will only show you a maximum of 17 characters at a time and the text-fields for the '''Ships''' tab is even worse, only showing a maximum of 3 characters at a time. This is why why many prefer to edit this directly in the overview file, where there are no limits or restrictions.

{|

|}

This is an example of one of the pre-saved overviews that were available at the time of writing this guide. On the left is the unedited version of the overview, on the right is the code with the changes {{co|slateblue|highlighted in blue}} that enables the colour-coding and font-changes.

These changes are possible to do ingame, albeit tricky since the window and editing fields are extremely limited. But the game will accept and change these values from inside the game, so there's technically no need to export and edit the files if this is all you want to edit.

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The format of this is pretty straight forward. The {{co|violet|shipLabels:}} tag marks the beginning of the settings for labels and the {{co|violet|-}} indentations breaks up the various attributes. The {{co|violet|pre}} attributes add stuff before the label while the {{co|violet|post}} attribute add stuff after the label. The {{co|violet|state}} attribute is a simple integer showing if it's enabled (1) or disabled (0) while the {{co|violet|type}} attribute is the name of the attribute. The value for each attribute ends up on the line below, after the {{co|violet|-}} indentation. Text doesn't have to be wrapped in {{co|violet|&#39;&#39;}}s, but can if you feel that makes it easier to read.

</nowiki></pre&lt;noinclude&gt;&lt;/noinclude&gt;>

|}

The above mentioned example will end up looking like this:

{|