3.1 Activating the plugin

There are two ways of using this plugin: You can either activate the plugin globally by setting the InstallAdapter tag to True when @REQUIRE-ing it. To do this, simply put the following preprocessor command at the top of your script:

 
@REQUIRE "xad", {InstallAdapter = True}

If you activate the plugin in this way, it will become globally available and all ensuing commands that deal with files will support the opening of files from XAD archive sources. For example, you could do something like this then:

 
LoadBrush(1, "test.rar/testpicture.jpg")

If you only need to open very few files from XAD archive sources, you can also choose to not activate the plugin globally by omitting the InstallAdapter tag on @REQUIRE and simply use the Adapter tag offered by most Hollywood commands to tell the respective Hollywood command to open the file using the xad.hwp plugin. Here is an example:

 
LoadBrush(1, "test.rar/testpicture.jpg", {Adapter = "xad"})

By using the Adapter tag, LoadBrush() is told to open the specified file using the specified adapter, which is "xad" in our case. Thus, the Adapter tag allows you to use this plugin even without having installed a global file adapter for it first.

The same is true for Hollywood functions dealing with directories. Once the XAD plugin has been activated, it is possible to do things like the following:

 
OpenDirectory(1, "test.rar")

You could then iterate over all files and directories in test.rar. If you haven't activated a global adapter for xad.hwp, then just use the Adapter like above, e.g.

 
OpenDirectory(1, "test.rar", {Adapter = "xad"})

See the next chapter for more details on treating archives supported by the XAD system as directories.


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