Editing Guide to XML frames part2 (section)

== Learning more ==
This about wraps up this guide on XML frames. If you've made it this far and understood the concepts shown, you should be well on your way to creating complex user interfaces. But there is so much more to frames than can be put in a guide, even one a long as this. So we'll end this guide with a short discussion on where to learn more about frames and other elements.

The first place is the Runes of Magic Wiki itself, for obvious reasons. The Wiki has a wealth of information available. Another good source is other people's add-ons. Though care should be taken that you don't copy other people's code without permission, learning how something can be done is fair use. This can often lead you to new ideas and ways to do things.

One of the best sources is the game itself. RoM's entire user interface is created using Lua and so is filled with working examples. The catch is that it requires a little more investigative research and a few external tools (such as an FDB extractor program) to get at the code. It is suggested that all the files in <code>interface.fdb</code> be extracted to some folder where you can perform searches on the files.

One file worth looking at is <code>worldxml/ui.xsd</code> from <code>interface.fdb</code>. This file is used by the game for validating the XML file (see the last attribute of the <code>Ui</code> tag at the start of any XML file). Though it can be a little strange to read through, this file contains all the tags, attributes, and values that an XML file is allowed to contain. Getting to know this file and how it relates to the XML files can help you discover much of how frames and other elements work.

Another source of information actually comes from a different game. World of Warcraft was one of the inspirations for Runes of Magic, and the Lua API used in RoM is very similar to WoW's. The similarities go to such an extent that we can learn much about how RoM's functions and frames work by looking at WoW's API. Be aware that they are not identical, so not everything will work out of the box.