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<title>ReAction - README</title>
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<h1>ReAction - README</h1>
<h1>Contents</h1>
<div style="font-size: 120%; font-weight: bold; margin-left: 30px;">
<a href="#welcome">Welcome to ReAction</a><br/>
<a href="#credits">Credits</a><br/>
<a href="#features">Features</a><br/>
<a href="#usage">Using ReAction</a><br/>
<a href="#license">License</a><br/>
</div>

<hr/>

<a name="welcome"><h1>Welcome to ReAction</h1></a>
<p>ReAction is a replacement for the various action bars provided by the default Blizzard UI. With ReAction, you can group your action buttons into bars however you want, and have as many bars as you want. Those bars can then have a number of dynamic behaviors assigned to them. ReAction provides an intuitive mouse-driven interface for arranging and resizing bars, and a dialog interface for the majority of the configuration options.</p>
<p>ReAction is <b>not</b> an install-and-forget addon that magically makes your action bars look spiffy and work better. It's a tool, designed to help you build a UI to your liking. It's not exactly geared toward novice AddOn users, but it's pretty straightforward to use, so don't be scared off if this is your first AddOn. However, there are many action bar addons out there. I suggest you try several and choose the one that works best for you. Other popular action bar addons include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Bartender</li>
<li>Flexbar</li>
<li>Bongos</li>
<li>Trinity Bars</li>
<li>InfiniBar</li>
</ul>
<p>Note that action bar addons are by nature generally incompatible with each other. Only enable one at a time! Most can currently be found on <a href="http://files.wowace.com">WowAce</a>, <a href="http://www.wowinterface.com">WoWInterface</a>, and/or <a href="http://wow.curse.com/downloads/">Curse Gaming</a>.</p>
<p>ReAction is compatible with WoW 3.0.</p>

<a name="credits"><h1>Credits</h1></a>
<p>The WoW AddOn authoring community is rich and diverse. Virtually every successful addon author learns by reading, dissecting, and even pilfering (:-P) others' code. ReAction owes its existence to the following (in no particular order):</p>
<ul>
<li>WoWAce team</li>
<li>Forumgoers of Blizzard's UI forum</li>
<li>ckknight (FuBar and other libraries)</li>
<li>Nevcairiel (Bartender)</li>
<li>Toadkiller (AutoBar)</li>
<li>Sairen (CyCircled)</li>
<li>Maul (Trinity Bars) </li>
<li>Tuller (Bongos)</li>
<li>cncfanatics & co (Flexbar 2)</li>
<li>jjsheets (InfiniBar and ButtonFacade)</li>
<li>&lt;The Kids Are In Bed&gt; of US-Staghelm, my everynight crew and alpha testers</li>
</ul>
<p>ReAction embeds components of the Ace3 framework.</p>

<a name="features"><h1>Features of ReAction</h1></a>
<ul>
<li>Unlimited number of bars</li>
<li>Unlimited number of buttons per bar</li>
<li>Arrange and resize bars, buttons, and grid layout with the mouse</li>
<li>Anchor bars to one another</li>
<li>Support for actions and pet actions</li>
<li>Paged actionbar and possess-target (e.g. Mind Control) support</li>
<li>Dynamic bar effects, such as page transitions, show/hide, reposition, etc</li>
<li>Modular extensible architecture</li>
</ul>
<p>The design goal of ReAction is to be user-friendly and feature-efficient. Useful features are incorporated: "fluff" is culled out. Many behaviors have been inspired by other addons. It is a work in progress.</p>

<a name="plannedfeatures"><h2>Planned Features of Reaction</h2></a>
<p>The following are planned upcoming features:</p>
<ul>
<li>Button support for micro menu and bag bars</li>
<li>Button support with intelligent populating for forms, stealth, shadowform, totems, auras, presences, and aspects</li>
<li>Non action-slot buttons which avoid the 120-action limitation, as an option</li>
<li>Additional dynamic behaviors, including mouseover pop-up bars, stateful clicks, etc</li>
<li>Manual page-switching controls for paged bars</li>
<li>CyCircled and ButtonFacade compatibility (install CyCircled and/or ButtonFacade separately)</li>
<li>Optional FuBar configuration plugin</li>
<li>More features for bar positioning and anchoring</li>
</ul>

<a name="nonfeatures"><h2>NON-Features of ReAction</h2></a>
<ul>
<li>There is no method of inserting custom user script hooks to button events. If you want to do that sort of thing you'll have to hack the code or write your own module.</li>
<li>ReAction does not provide slash commands for most of its interface.</li>
<li>I'm not going to write a Titan panel plugin.</li>
<li>There are no auto-layout options other than a grid layout.</li>
<li>If you hide the Blizzard main action bar, ReAction doesn't provide any replacement for the experience bar or "lag meter".</li>
<li>No support for bar borders, backgrounds, or other textures.</li>
<li>ReAction button keybindings are not configured via the standard Blizzard keybinding UI, and probably never will be.</li>
<li>No plans to allow you to move around the default Blizzard buttons. ReAction makes and manages its own buttons, it doesn't swipe them from the default UI.</li>
</ul>
<p>Some of these (lack of an XP bar, for instance) are better served by other unrelated addons, as they're not action-button related. Others could be implemented by someone else as extensions.</p>

<a name="usage"><h1>Using ReAction</h1></a>
<h2>Installation</h2>
<p>ReAction is distributed as a ZIP file: like all addons, just extract the archive contents into <b>World of Warcraft/Interface/Addons</b>. This will create a new folder called 'ReAction' in the Addons folder. Restart WoW, check that the AddOn is enabled in the character-select screen, and away you go.</p>
<p>A common mistake is to extract the contents into a new folder named ReAction (thereby creating a doubly nested Addons/ReAction/ReAction), or to rename the ReAction folder. Make sure that the path to this README file is <b>World of Warcraft/Interface/Addons/ReAction/README.html</b>.</p>

<h3>Modules</h3>
<p>ReAction ships with several modules pre-installed. Each module is in fact a completely self-contained AddOn, and can be removed from the ReAction/modules/ folder and dragged up to the main AddOn level, if you like. This really isn't necessary, as the modules themselves don't consume many resources unless you're actually using their features, in which case they need to be installed anyway. But if you're into optimizing your personal AddOn footprint, you can promote the modules you aren't using. They're even marked Load-On-Demand, so if you decide to use their features later, they'll load automatically.</p>

<h2>First Run</h2>
<p>After ReAction is installed and enabled, and you've logged in to your WoW character, you probably won't notice anything different. ReAction assumes nothing about how you want to use it: by default, it does nothing at all. It doesn't make any new bars, and doesn't do anything to the standard Blizzard bars.</p>

<p>To start, type /rxn (or /reaction) in the chat window. This will bring up the general ReAction dialogue window. You can also get there by hitting ESC to bring up the game menu, choose Interface Options, select the Addons tab, then select ReAction from the list.</p>

<p>The general configuration window only has a few options in it. The most interesting one is 'Hide Blizzard Action Bars'. Check that option, and *poof* your main action bar (as well as the extra bars and pet bar) disappears. Un-check it, and *whoosh* they're back. ReAction exists alongside the main action bar: you can use it with or without Blizzard's default UI. Note, however, that the default Blizzard UI makes use of all 120 action slots (depending on character class): therefore if you leave the Blizzard UI up, you'll almost certainly have to custom map the action slots of ReAction's buttons. For your first test-drive, I recommend hiding the Blizzard UI to start with a blank slate.</p>

<p>To get started making some bars, click the button to launch the Bar Editor.</p>

<h2>Laying Out Your Bars</h2>
<p><b>Note:</b> By default, ReAction stores all settings per-character. Each character, when logged in for the first time using ReAction, will start from a blank slate. Use the Profile options to copy settings from one character to another. You can also use shared profiles, but note that ReAction also stores the keybindings with the profile, so toons using shared profiles will have shared keybinds (but different actions) on their buttons, <i>even if you select 'per-character bindings' in the Blizzard UI</i>.</p>

<p>To create a bar, you'll need to open the ReAction Bar Editor dialogue, which is a separate window from the general configuration dialogue. To get there, either click the Edit Bars... button at the top of the main dialogue, or type /rxn edit. When the Bar Editor is open, you're in "config mode". You can drag the bars around the screen and resize them to your heart's content. This mode is automatically exited during combat. You can also toggle "config mode" <i>without</i> bringing up the Bar Editor dialog by typing /rxn config.</p>

<p>Once in the Bar Editor, you can create bars, which are simply collections of buttons. Each bar has a number of buttons arranged in a grid, and must have a name. Set up these basic properties and create your bar.</p>

<p>Now that you've got a bar, you can drag it around on screen to put it wherever you want. You can also change its grid layout, as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>Drag on a corner to change the button size.</li>
<li>Right-click drag on a corner to change the button spacing.</li>
<li>Drag an edge to add/remove buttons to that edge.</li>
</ul>

<p>You can also right-click on a bar to configure its properties via the Bar Editor. Although a bar will work perfectly fine out of the box, the Bar Editor allows you to custom tune its behaviors and appearance.

<h2>Key Bindings</h2>
<p>To bind keys to your buttons, either type /rxn keybind or click the Key Bindings button in the main configuration dialogue. This will open a small window and outline all your ReAction buttons in green. To bind a key, hover your mouse over a button and press the key, or Escape to unbind the key from the button. Click the 'Save' button to exit keybinding mode. Note: keybinding changes are saved instantly and cannot be undone - the 'Revert' button doesn't actually do anything (yet).</p>

<a name="config"><h2>Configuring Your Bars</h2></a>
<h3>General Configuration</h3>
<p>On the bar editor, each bar has several tabs to configure it. General configuration (e.g. position), action-type specific configuration (# pages, etc), and dynamic behavior. The general config options are pretty self-explanatory.</p>

<h3>Action Buttons</h3>
<p>Action buttons can be hidden when there's no action in that slot. They can also be re-mapped to the target's actions if you're currently Mind Controlling something. You can also configure the bar to have multiple 'pages', like the Blizzard UI's main bar. This won't actually have any effect unless you also specify dynamic page transitions, discussed in the next section. (manual page-switching controls coming later)</p>

<p>You can also specify the action-slot ID for each button, either individually or all at once via a string. WoW only gives you 120 action slots. Each button consumes one action slot <i>per page</i>, so if you have a 6-page 20-button bar, they're all used up. By default, ReAction allocates these action slots automatically so you don't have to worry about it. Just keep in mind that if you have more than 120 total slots in use, you'll get some repeats, which means that you'll have some buttons that mirror each other all the time. If you want to re-arrange the action slot ordering for whatever reason (for example, to keep the UIs on multiple computers in sync), you can do it in this panel. Or, if you want to have some intentional button mirrors (which would allow you to set up multiple keybindings for the same action, or show the same action in multiple pages or locations, without consuming multiple action slots), you can set it up that way too.</p>

<h3>Pet Action Buttons</h3>
<p>You can create a pet bar, which automatically shows itself when your pet is out. You can even create multiple pet bars, if you want, but there's not much motivation to do that. Pet buttons do not support multiple pages, and behave pretty much exactly like Blizzard's pet bar.</p>

<h3>Dynamic Behavior</h3>
<p>Dynamic bar behavior is a complex topic. At its most basic, you can have a bar switch between pages if you change stances/forms/stealth, just like the Blizzard UI does. For the more advanced user, multiple states can be created and transitions defined based on the available events as dictated by Blizzard's secure button API.</p>

<p>To set up dynamic behavior for your bars, open the ReAction Bar Editor (either by shift-clicking the FuBar/minimap button, or from the Blizzard Interface/AddOns dialogue, or by typing /rxn edit in chat) and select the bar to work on. On the right panel, you'll see several tabs, one of which is labeled 'Dynamic State'. Choose that and you'll get a sub-panel with a state menu and more tabs.</p>

<p><b>Example: </b> The simplest example is a bar that switches between three pages depending on a Warrior's stance. To set this up, create an action bar, give it three pages (see <a href="#config">Configuring Your Bars</a>), and then create three states for it. You can name those three states whatever you want, but for simplicity's sake, let's name them Battle, Defensive, and Berserker. Choose each state and select a page number (1,2, or 3) for it to display in the Properties tab. Then select the Rules tab, choose "when ALL of these" (or "when ANY of these"), and check the corresponding Battle/Defensive/Bersker checkbox for that state. NOTE: you can only do this on an actual Warrior character - other classes won't see the stance checkboxes, as they don't apply, but you can do something similar for many classes). That's it, you're done: the bar will now auto-switch between three pages when you change stances. Try it, and watch the actions on that bar change (assuming, of course, that you've dropped abilities into those slots).</p>

<p>Create states for your bar, and explore the various options of state properties and selection rules. State selection is evaluated in the order that the states are listed in the menu (top to bottom), so you may need to re-arrange them to get just the behavior that you want.</p>

<p><b>How it works:</b> Every time the game registers an event of certain types (modifier key, stance/form/stealth change, target/focus change, party member change), it processes the list of states looking for a match, according to the selection rule. The first match becomes the new state immediately, and the state's properties are applied to the bar. The game also polls certain other conditions (anything that a macro can detect, see below) 5 times per second. So some oddball state transitions will always be a tiny bit sluggish due to the architecture of the game.</p>

<p>Remember: the more complicated you make your state-selectors, the more likely it is that you'll create a situation you didn't necessarily expect!</p>

<p><b>Default State:</b> If you select one of your rules to be a default state in the Rules tab, then if none of the other states are true, it will be the state. If you don't have a default state, then if no rule is true, the bar will just stay in whatever condition it's already in. If you specify multiple states as default states, the highest-ranking one will be used.</p>

<p><b>Custom Selection Rules:</b> Only the most common selection rules are included in the 'any' and 'all' checkbox listing. However, you can do almost anything that the game will allow you to via custom rules. Custom selection rules work exactly like a macro options clauses (in fact, they get passed to the same API function, SecureOptionsCmdParse()). The following are all valid examples of what you can put in the Custom textbox:</p>
<ul style="font-family: Courier New, mono; font-size: 80%">
<li> [harm] </li>
<li> [mod:alt,help][notarget] </li>
<li> [channelling:Mend Pet] </li>
<li> [mounted, flyable] </li>
</ul>
<p>Note that only the parts of macros that go within brackets [] are valid custom selection rules. The rest of what would normally go in a macro (i.e. the actual macro <i>action</i> and its parameters) aren't part of the selection rule clause: the macro action in this case is always "switch to state X". For a complete list of macro options, see <a href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Making_a_macro#Part_II:_Macro_Options">Cogwheel's macro guide, hosted at WoWWiki</a>. Focus on the Macro Options section (Part II), with the conditionals statements. The only thing that doesn't apply is the <span style="font-family: Courier New, mono; font-size: 80%"/>[button:x]</span> clause. No mouse button is associated with the state driver, so any test that involves a particular button will fail.</p>

<p><b>Keybound States: </b> If you select 'via Keybinding' from the Selection Rule drop-down, then you can define a hotkey which will toggle the state on/off. When toggled on, the bar will remain in that state and <b>ignore</b> all other state transition events until you toggle it off. All keybound states default to 'off' when the UI reloads. It is possible to define multiple keybound states for a single bar. In that case, the keybound states will override each other.</p>

<a name="license"><h1>License</h1></a>
<p>ReAction is licenced under a variant of the MIT software licence, and is essentially freeware. See the <a href="LICENSE.txt">LICENSE.txt</a> file in this folder.</p>
<p>ReAction embeds components of the Ace frameworks, which are covered under their own licenses.</p>

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author	Flick <flickerstreak@gmail.com>
date	Fri, 17 Oct 2008 22:43:57 +0000
parents	7cabc8ac6c16
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