WowAce

Broker_RecountFu

Broker_RecountFu is an LDB (LibDataBroker, aka: 'Broker') compatible display plugin for users of the Recount damage meter. It allows users of Broker compatible display addons such as ChocolateBar, TitanPanel, FuBar+Broker2FuBar and so forth to display an icon, some icon-text, a tooltip and a right-click menu that offers quick access to Recount's own features and this plugin's configuration options.

Installation and Requirements
Broker_RecountFu is installed just like any other addon. Pick your preferred source (The Curse website or the Curse Client addon updater tool) and install in the normal manner. To use the addon, you will also need the Recount addon and an LDB compatible display addon - for the purposes of convenience, we're going to recommend ChocolateBar as such an addon but you may choose freely from any of the hundreds of viable alternatives available.

After installing the addon, you will need to ensure that your display addon is configured to display the elements of Broker_RecountFu that you wish to be able to see: The options you can select are the icon, the text (that normally appears next to the icon) and the tooltip that appears when you mouse-over the icon/text. You can do this in ChocolateBar by right-clicking on an empty section of the bar to bring up the ChocolateBar config screen and from there you will see each plugin listed and against each one, a tick-box to determine if each of the icon, text and tooltip should be displayed. Other LDB display addons will probably offer similar options.

Basic Functionality
We'll assume you've configured your LDB display addon to show all of the possible components, the icon, the text and the tooltip. Therefore, look at your display and identify the 'RecountFu' icon. It should be easy to recognise, as three horizonal coloured bars representative of a damage-meter display. You may find that you have more than one copy of this icon visible in your display. This is because this same icon, which was originally created for the 'FuBar_RecountFu' addon (see the 'history' section further down for more information on this addon), has subsequently become the defacto Recount icon, being adopted by both Recount itself and by the majority of other Recount plugin addons that are available.

Given that 'Broker_RecountFu' offers a very rich set of features for a Recount plugin, it is probably safe to say that you can confidently disable the display of any other Recount plugins, including the one provided by Recount itself, via your display addon's configuration screens which will save some screen-space and leave you with just the one icon should this be important to you.

With that sorted, simply note what the Broker_RecountFu addon provides out-of-the-box. You'll see the icon and some text beside it which will either be a summary of some recent combat data if your Recount addon has not been reset recently or the addon's name otherwise. If you mouse-over the icon/text, a tooltip will appear that again will either display some recent combat data or have blank displays if Recount has been reset.

Finally, if you right-click on the icon/text, a menu will appear that has four major sub-menus branching from it for Recount, the text, the tooltip and 'system'.

The following 'Feature Description' sections take you through the main aspects of functionality provided by this addon according to each of the above noted menus.

Feature Description - Recount Menu
The Recount menu gives you direct access to features of the Recount damage meter that add convenience and ease-of-use. From the menu you can select which report-mode you wish Recount to display, quickly send a report to another player or bring up any of the real-time data-windows that many players often discover for the first time via this menu.

A number of window controls allow you to show or hide the main Recount window and lock it into position or reset its position if it has become 'lost' off-screen by accident.

Feature Description - Text Menu
The text menu enables the user to configure how the text that appears next to the addon's icon will appear. It consists of a list of data-items that may be enabled or disabled. Enabled items are shown in the text, disabled items are not. The list is divided into two main parts which are broadly similar to each other. The first offers a set of data-items relating to the player's performance in the last fight or, if the player is in combat, the current fight. The second offers an almost identical set of data-items relating to the player's performance over the entire set of recorded data, which commonly would be for a single raid if the player remembered to reset Recount's data the beginning of the raid.

The options available are as follows:

Last Fight/Current Fight Options:

1. Damage done rank. (What rank position was the player? 1st? 2nd? etc.)
   
2. Damage done. (How much damage the player did in the last/current fight?)
   
3. Damage rate rank. (What rank position was the player? 1st? 2nd? etc.)
   
4. Damage rate. (What was the player's DPS in the last/current fight?)

1. Healing done rank. (What rank position was the player? 1st? 2nd? etc.)
   
2. Healing done. (How much healing the player did in the last/current fight?)
   
3. Healing rate rank. (What rank position was the player? 1st? 2nd? etc.)
   
4. Healing rate. (What was the player's HPS in the last/current fight?)

1. Combat time. (How long did the last/current fight last?)
   
2. Opponent name. (What was the name of the last/current fight's opponent?)

Overall Data Options:

1. Damage done rank. (What rank position was the player? 1st? 2nd? etc.)
   
2. Damage done. (How much damage the player did overall?)
   
3. Damage rate rank. (What rank position was the player? 1st? 2nd? etc.)
   
4. Damage rate. (What was the player's DPS overall?)

1. Healing done rank. (What rank position was the player? 1st? 2nd? etc.)
   
2. Healing done. (How much healing the player did overall?)
   
3. Healing rate rank. (What rank position was the player? 1st? 2nd? etc.)
   
4. Healing rate. (What was the player's HPS overall?)

1. Combat time. (How long has the player been in combat overall?)

Data Label Options:

1. Show rank labels.
   
2. Show amount labels.
   
3. Show rate labels.
   
4. Show time labels.

Let's now consider the data-label options at the bottom of the list. The data-label is the small piece of text that indicates what a data-item represents. Thus, if the player chose to display the "Damage Done" data item from the 'Last/Current Fight' list and elected to 'Show amount labels', the text displayed would be "LF-D: 123,456,789" where the label was the "LF-D:" part and the data-item was the "123, 456, 789" part. Further, the label indicates it is for the last fight ('LF') and damage done ('D').

Label Components:

Last Fight = LF, Current Fight = C, Overall = O.
Damage Rank/Damage Done = D, Damage Rate = DPS.
Healing Rank/Healing Done = H, Healing Rate = HPS.
Time = T.

Typically, it is not necessary or desireable to display a label in front of every data-item you have selected so a good strategy is to display only the label that relates to the first item on display. For example, if I were playing a melee-DPS character, I might wish to see my Damage Done Rank, my Damage Done and my Damage Rate in the text along with the combat time and opponent name. I'd therefore enable the label for the damage done rank and combat time and disable the rest. This would give me a text display along the following lines:

LF-D: #1 123,456,789 15,852 T: 6m,32s Hogger

From this text, I can see that I finished #1 in terms of damage done in the last fight, I put out 123,456,789 damage at a rate of 15,852 DPS and that the fight lasted for 6 minutes and 32 seconds and was against Hogger. On the page here that's quite a long string of text and the numbers flow into each other a bit. The addon displays each data-item in a different colour however making it fairly easy to differentiate each number.

The intention of these options is to allow you to configure the text display to show you the small pieces of information with at-a-glance ease anytime you like, including when in combat. Using the above example, if I finished a fight and it reported that I'd finished in position #2 or #3 I might then want to look at more data from the encounter to see who finished in position #1. For this purpose, the tooltip is available and the configuration options for the tooltip are described in the next section.

Feature Description - Tooltip Menu
The tooltip menu enables the user to configure how the tooltip that appears when the user mouses-over the addon's icon will appear. It consists of a list of data-displays that may be enabled or disabled. Enabled displays are shown in the tooltip, disabled displays are not.

The list is divided into several sections by display-type. The first section lists the player-tables for each of the following report types:

1. Damage Done, Last Fight.
   
2. Damage Done, Overall.
   
3. Healing Done, Last Fight.
   
4. Healing Done, Overall.

Each of these displays a table listing the names of the players along with their total damage/healing done and their damage/healing rate, according to which report/s you select. After these player specific displays, two group displays are available:

1. Summary, Last Fight.
   
2. Summary, Overall.

Each of these displays shows a summary of the damage done, damage taken, healing done and healing taken by the group as a whole for the specified duration.

Finally, the last display option is "Button Actions" and it allows the player to choose whether or not the button actions are shown at the bottom of the tooltip. These are normally shown by default but if a player is attempting to squeeze as much data as possible into the tooltip, disabling the Button Actions display might by useful.

Players can further control how much space each report shown takes up on screen by adjusting the table-limit size setting at the menu's base. By default the tooltip is not limited to showing only the top 5 results in each table but if you want to see more, the 'Table Size Limit' will let you pick one of several values between 0 (unlimited) and 40 which corresponds to the maximum raid size available.

Feature Description - System Menu
The system menu lets you adjust a few settings that determine how the addon itself functions. The first two options allow the player to configure the addon's 'pulse-rate' when resting and when in combat. The 'pulse-rate' is the rate at which the addon performs periodic tasks like updating the text display.

By default the addon is configured with a resting pulse-rate of 5 seconds (ie: one pulse every five seconds) and a combat pulse-rate of 1 second. This means that if the player has enabled the current/last fight time display, then during combat it will appear to count at the expected 1 second intervals. When out of combat, the data is static and so less frequent updates are needed.

If however a player is using a less powerful machine which makes it necessary to limit the amount of CPU time being used, the addon allows the player to adjust either pulse rate, available options being 1 second, 5 seconds and 10 seconds. This would result in the time field updating in 5 or 10 second jumps when in combat (and if displayed) but will help reduce the demand of the system by a very small but possibly valuable-to-the-player amount.

The next three options on the system menu allow the player to select their three favourite Recount reports. These three reports are then accessible via modifier-clicking with the left mouse button on the addon's icon.

Example:

Favourite Report 1 = LBM+<Alt>
Favourite Report 2 = LBM+<Ctrl>
Favourite Report 3 = LBM+<Alt>+<Ctrl>

Simply pick your three favourite reports and then test the configuration by performing the corrsponding modifier-click with the left mouse button on the addon's icon.

The final option on the system menu is a toggle to switch Debug mode on or off. This is merely a testing tool used by the addon author when developing the addon and should be left disabled.

Why This Addon Exists - A History of 'RecountFu'
To understand why this particular addon exists, one first needs to have an understanding and appreciation of one small corner of the WoW addon universe. Today, Recount is perhaps one of the most widely used damage-meter addons available to WoW players. It has acheived this position by being an excellent tool that performs a useful task reliably and in a pleasing manner.

Before Recount was first created, the most commonly used damage meter was "DamageMeters" and for the time, it too was useful and popular. It was at this time that menu-bar addons such as TitanPanel and FuBar first became widely popular, offering as they did quick access to information and commonly needed features of other addons. Often-times, one author would write an addon that proved useful to another author who would then write a plugin for FuBar or TitanPanel to improve their experience when using the addon.

So it was for DamageMeters; one author created the addon and another created the most simple FuBar plugin for it, a simple icon that appeared in the player's FuBar menu-bar and when clicked, toggled the visibility of the DamageMeters window. It was called "FuBar_DamageMetersFu" Although this does not sound impressive, this convenience came at a time when the only other way to toggle the visibility of the addon was to type "/dms" or similar in the chat window.

When Recount first appeared, it too required the user to type a chat window command to change its visibility. After migrating from DamageMeters to Recount, this FuBar-using author found the loss of the convenience that had previously been available via 'DamageMetersFu' something of a sadness and elected to write an addon for Recount that provided similar functionality. Having never written an addon before, it was not a completely trivial undertaking.

However, one of the best qualities of how WoW addons are made is that it is possible for any author to read the source-code of the addons they have downloaded and from that, to potentially learn how to write their own addons using the lessons learned. Thus it was that this author's first WoW addon came into existance. It was called "FuBar_RecountFu".

(Aside: The conventions of the day said that if an addon had a name "MyAddon" then a FuBar-specific plugin for that addon would typically be called "FuBar_MyAddonFu" to help other players easily identify it as a plugin for FuBar for the MyAddon addon. Hence the name: FuBar_RecountFu.)

Rather than simply providing a clickable icon to show/hide the Recount window, 'RecountFu' offered in addition a right-click menu that gave access to other useful but often difficult-to-find features. It was possibly to pick the exact Recount view mode from the menu or one of the real-time report windows, making interaction with Recount an easy visual process rather than a more fiddly chat window command-based experience. As a result, FuBar_RecountFu became a very popular addon in its own right.

Over time, other authors contributed their time to enhance the addon, adding additional features, refinements or translations of the addon's text into other languages to increase its international appeal. Recount's project manager, Elsia, even added some of the most useful features yet to the addon; donating functions that called into the heart of the Recount addon itself to allow RecountFu to display real-time and summary combat data in its test and tooltip displays.

The culmination of this effort was perhaps the most feature-filled Recount plugin available for FuBar users and one that remains hugely popular today.

In the past couple of years, two things have happened within the WoW addon community to reduce the overall appeal of FuBar_RecountFu. Firstly, the author of the FuBar menu-bar addon decided to stop supporting and developing FuBar, which means that it is now in a state of gradual degradation. It does continue to work 'more or less' but without a dedicated developer looking after it, it will slowly fade and die as each new patch brings changes that it will not be able to accomodate and respond to.

Secondly, at the time when FuBar_RecountFu was created, a fantastic infrastructure for addon-developers was in-place, through the existence of a series of 'libraries' of useful code known as the Ace2 Framework. FuBar_RecountFu is based on the Ace2 libraries, the FuBar library and the Dewdrop library.

Today, the Ace2 Framework libraries have been replaced by the Ace3 Framework libraries. FuBar is no longer being developed and the Dewdrop library, which enabled the easy creation of drop-down menus, has similarly lost favour and support. A new standard, known as the LibDataBroker (aka: LDB or Broker) standard has emerged as the new de-facto means for integrating addons into each other. Where once an author would write a 'FuBar Plugin' or a 'TitanPanel Plugin', neither of which would work with the other system, now an author merely needs to write a 'Broker' compatible addon and it will integrate into either FuBar, TitanPanel or with any other addon that adheres to the standard.

In the early days of the existence of the LDB standard, some users asked whether plans existed to convert FuBar_RecountFu into a Broker compatible addon but at the time this author did not have sufficient time to undertake such a task. As a result, when approached by another author requesting permission to convert this addon to the Broker standard, it was readily given. That author subsequently created "Broker_Recount" which you can download today from 'a quality Curse website near you!'

However, the "Broker_Recount" addon offered only the single clickable icon to show/hide Recount's main window that the original "FuBar_DamageMetersFu" had offered for DM users. Gone were the menus, the dynamic data displays and all that shiny goodness that so many other players had appreciated.

Recount itself incorporated basic support for LDB to provide its own clickable icon that would show/hide the main Recount window which rendered Broker_Recount somewhat redundant. In the meantime, numerous users of FuBar_RecountFu continued to enquire via comments, PMs and emails whether any plans existed to migrate FuBar_RecountFu and its feature-set to the Broker standard.

It is said that charity begins at home and, if FuBar_RecountFu was originally written to serve this author's own selfish wish for such an addon, then this author's later migration from the glorious but fading FuBar to the excellent and LDB-friendly ChocolateBar addon meant that once again the selfish needs of this author would be directly served by such an undertaking.

All of which resulted in the addon you see today, named as "Broker_RecountFu" to retain the nominal link to its "FuBar_RecountFu" predecessor, a Broker compatible plugin for Recount users offering an even richer feature-set than its inspiration, written entirely using the Ace3 and LDB libraries to ensure adherence to the best standards currently available in the WoW addon community.

It is hoped that you will find "Broker_RecountFu" useful and that it performs a good service for many years to come. If you have comments or questions, please get in touch using the contact options available through this site.

The 'RecountFu' family
FuBar_RecountFu: 2006-present.
Broker_RecountFu: 2011-present.

Credits, Thanks and More.
Thanks must first be given to the original author of Recount, a player named 'Cryect' who gave life to one of the most stunningly useful WoW addons that continues to exist today. For an active raider - and especially for one that often uses the ZAT approach to raiding, the amount of value received from the ability to review recent combat events in-game via the addon's many reports has been invaluable. Equal thanks must therefore also be offered to Elsia who later took over the management of the Recount project when Cryect moved on and remains to this day one of the most respected and capable addon authors working within the community.

Similar thanks go to the many many individuals that either manage or contribute to the 'big' library projects like the Ace2 and Ace3 Frameworks upon which so many other addons, the 'Recount' family included, are based. It's not just the developers of these libraries that receive credit though but all the other authors and users that help improve their quality by using the libraries and noting issues, allowing them to be refined and corrected until we're left with good solid robust foundations for our own work.

And finally, it would be remiss not to mention the fine people in our guild and those unfortunate souls on the friends-list that have suffered the numerous 'beta' versions throughout each development cycle and offered feedback, suggestions and even occasionally insights and reminders... the kinds of things to keep an addon-author's feet firmly planted on the ground!

Screenshots of the addon's configuration and option menus: