I was thinking of something that would keep me at work and this sounds like a great idea, and I've heard of people doing it before, but I'm not sure which map editing application allows you to import a .txt or .doc to supplement Triggers, Actions, Conditions, Forces, etc.

I'm also not sure what "language" I would use to code in this way. Any ideas? Or is it reserved for the truly elite mapmakers?

SCMDraft has a text trigger feature, so if you memorize how its code works, you can write all the triggers in one .txt file and copy and paste the text into SCMDraft later.

WRITING the triggers in text form is usually not recommended since there's no syntax program.
That means you would have to write out every single trigger action / condition, which is way faster in the GUI.
But EDITING is quite convenient in text triggers by using find and replace. For example when you want to change the spell activation unit from 1 unit to another.

If you plan to do really big maps where it could save you a fair amount of time (if done right) I recommend you talk to Tuxedo Templar (Tuxlar) at maplantis. He uses a text editor that can learn custom syntaxes and has templates for the most important actions / conditions.
He describes his techniques here.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 21 2008, 5:12 pm by NudeRaider.

I always have the same message in scmdraft2's text based trigger editor:
"error at line 0: started
error at line 30580: done!"
or 2 times the same line....
what does that mean? or is it just a bad output of "compiling was succesful, no errors found"?

Yes Ahli, SI was just lazy and didn't change the output for successful compiling.
If there's no text stating what went wrong but "started" and "done!" you can assume it worked.

i actually type triggers faster than using the classic GUI, but I use SF, which has the string list on the right.

If you have ever played the map Astrogears, you might be suprised that every trigger was written with Notepad++, an advanced freeware version of notepad made for plug-ins, html editing and the like. The beauty of SI's text trigger editor is that it removes anything that it deems as un-needed, non-trigger information. So Tux made a plug-in for Notepad++ that easily allows you to sort your text triggering and has many conditions/actions as macros. If you want more information on this, talk to Tux at Warbox Forums

And, just to let you know, SCMDraft has it's own language that is very easy to learn and understand.