Event handling done, and a bit about File I/O

Well, the bare-bones version of the event handling system is done. There are some improvements to make, and I only support a few keys and commands still, but the system is fairly robust and extensible. Plus, the key mappings are read from configuration files now, so they can be modified without recompiling.

The shape it has taken, in the end, is quite close to my original design. I created an Event Interpreter, which receives the system events and returns a command. In order to do this, it has a list of contexts where it searches for the event. Each context consists of a map, using events as the key.

The order of contexts is important, since an event can have different meanings in each. The contexts closer to the top have priority, however, and they override the commands in lower contexts. During the course of the program, the contexts may shift up and down, or even be removed completely and held in a holding stack in order to disable a set of commands at once.

In order to load the contexts in the begining, the program reads a text configuration file. The file is structured such that contexts are marked by curly braces ({}), and are composed of lines delimited by semi colons (;). Each line consists of an Event:Command pair, separated by a colon (:). The properties of each event and command, which identify them, are set apart by commas. So a simplex context would look like

{EventType, EventCode, : CommandType, CommandCode,;}

I'll probably end up adding an identifier for the Context. As it stands, I can comment anywhere between Contexts, but I have to be careful about what I write inside them. I should add a validation code of some kind. A missing file can hang the program right now.

I'm pretty happy about how the file reading code came out. String manipulation in C++ isn't trivial, whic is one of the reasons why everyone usually ends up rolling their own string class. I managed to deal with it fairly cleanly, though. I can't handle encodings other than ANSI (maybe UTF-8, haven't tested), but for a configuration file this shouldn't be a problem.

Now that this is done, however, I need to consider what else needs to be done. I think it's about time I gave the drawing code another look. I can work on other parts, but for testing purposes being able to see the effect of things in the screen would be a lot more useful. I'm hoping to be able to create assets in real time, which is one of the main drives in the project, and I need to be able to see the output ahead of everything else.

This means giving the resource caches another look as well. So I'll be having some fun.