I use several Stream Deck profiles from the most prolific creators on Flightsim.to and I create some of my own. I have noticed some of the xml script group files have over on million characters, mostly contained in <edition> tags that pertain to fonts and typography. For example one file, A320Neo.xml, has over 1.1 million characters and takes so long to load into AAO that it hangs the program. But the version I made with the <edition> tags deleted loads in one second on an overwrite of the existing scripts. And all of the actions work on the Stream Deck, so I have demonstrated that the <edition> tags are not needed. I want to inform the profile creators of this but I wanted to run it by you first to be sure I am not missing anything. I seems AAO is adding these <edition> tags upon export of the script.

I'm on Windows 11 and MSFS 2020 and the latest release of AAO.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54820455221_4c4c76c1a6_b.jpg

 

 

 

Edited September 29, 2025Sep 29 by riveter

3 minutes ago, riveter said:

I seems AAO is adding these <edition> tags upon export of the script.

The Edition contains all the formatting of the scripts. When you remove that, all that is left is a single unbroken line of code.

Authors can choose to export scripts without the edition. That's an option on the export dialog "Remove Edition from scripts"

You can also remove the formatting on the Script Editor dialog, with the button at the top that has a red diagonal line.

Edited September 29, 2025Sep 29 by Lorby_SI

That works. It seem like it would be better to invert that option because the default is creating massive files with non applicable font and typography text. And the guys creating profiles don't appear to know about this.

Edited September 29, 2025Sep 29 by riveter

1 minute ago, riveter said:

OK. I'll take a look at that.

Let the authors of those scripts know about it. It doesn't really make sense to leave the edition in scripts that you provide to other people just to use. When you want them to edit the scripts that is a different story, then you kind of need the formatting.

I could add an option to "deflate" the script database and remove all editions. But that would affect your own scripts too.

Btw. when an application "hangs", that doesn't mean that it is broken ("...not responding.." to Windows). It normally just means that it is busy and will recover eventually.

You have to read in miles of stuff that does not apply. Every one of hundreds of item entries has this:
 

Quote

<edition>&lt;Section xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xml:space="preserve" TextAlignment="Left" LineHeight="Auto" IsHyphenationEnabled="False" xml:lang="en-us" FlowDirection="LeftToRight" NumberSubstitution.CultureSource="Text" NumberSubstitution.Substitution="AsCulture" FontFamily="Courier New" FontStyle="Normal" FontWeight="Normal" FontStretch="Normal" FontSize="12" Foreground="#FF000000" Typography.StandardLigatures="True" Typography.ContextualLigatures="True" Typography.DiscretionaryLigatures="False" Typography.HistoricalLigatures="False" Typography.AnnotationAlternates="0" Typography.ContextualAlternates="True" Typography.HistoricalForms="False" Typography.Kerning="True" Typography.CapitalSpacing="False" Typography.CaseSensitiveForms="False" Typography.StylisticSet1="False" Typography.StylisticSet2="False" Typography.StylisticSet3="False" Typography.StylisticSet4="False" Typography.StylisticSet5="False" Typography.StylisticSet6="False" Typography.StylisticSet7="False" Typography.StylisticSet8="False" Typography.StylisticSet9="False" Typography.StylisticSet10="False" Typography.StylisticSet11="False" Typography.StylisticSet12="False" Typography.StylisticSet13="False" Typography.StylisticSet14="False" Typography.StylisticSet15="False" Typography.StylisticSet16="False" Typography.StylisticSet17="False" Typography.StylisticSet18="False" Typography.StylisticSet19="False" Typography.StylisticSet20="False" Typography.Fraction="Normal" Typography.SlashedZero="False" Typography.MathematicalGreek="False" Typography.EastAsianExpertForms="False" Typography.Variants="Normal" Typography.Capitals="Normal" Typography.NumeralStyle="Normal" Typography.NumeralAlignment="Normal" Typography.EastAsianWidths="Normal" Typography.EastAsianLanguage="Normal" Typography.StandardSwashes="0" Typography.ContextualSwashes="0" Typography.StylisticAlternates="0"&gt;&lt;Paragraph&gt;&lt;Run Background="#FFFFFFFF"&gt;1·(&amp;gt;L:A32NX_FCU_EFIS_L_NAVAID_1_MODE,·Number)&lt;/Run&gt;&lt;/Paragraph&gt;&lt;/Section&gt;</edition>

 

I'll inform ChrisPU and Guenseli.

Edited September 29, 2025Sep 29 by riveter

10 minutes ago, riveter said:

You have to read in miles of stuff that does not apply. Every one of hundreds of item entries has this:

That's why there is the option to exclude it from the export.

24 minutes ago, riveter said:

I'll inform ChrisPU and Guenseli.

Should I add the same option to remove the edition when you Import scripts? 

I guess the problem is I never actually exported a script until I tried to figure out why Chris and Guenter had all that extra text in their scripts and they have been doing this for a while. So maybe they didn't realize that option was there. I'm more a script user than creator. But I did a test export and saw that AAO is inserting it. But the thing is I only learned what 'edition' is yesterday. I had to investigate it as I am not a programmer. I wish options like that had 'tool tips' because AAO has a heavy learning curve for the common user.

38 minutes ago, riveter said:

I guess the problem is I never actually exported a script until I tried to figure out why Chris and Guenter had all that extra text in their scripts and they have been doing this for a while. So maybe they didn't realize that option was there. I'm more a script user than creator. But I did a test export and saw that AAO is inserting it. But the thing is I only learned what 'edition' is yesterday. I had to investigate it as I am not a programmer. I wish options like that had 'tool tips' because AAO has a heavy learning curve for the common user.

RPN scripts don't have any formatting, they are a single unbroken line of code - as you can see in the grey box at the bottom of the editor, that contains the compiled code. Whenever you need to copy & paste RPN code from AAO, take it from the grey box, not the white editor area. The editor contains formatting characters that you can't use in the target application (like StreamDeck actions).

All formatting that you apply in the edtior (line breaks, newline, indentations, font information etc.) cannot be part of the code and must be saved separately in order to retain it. That's what is called the "Edition". It is not technologically necessary, it is just there for your convenience as a script author. Normally, authors are supposed to remove the edition when releasing scripts, but they don't have to.

Edited September 29, 2025Sep 29 by Lorby_SI

OK. Thanks for explaining that. So I have just one question. Those large xml files that are 90% edition text, does that cause any delay in the scripts when I press a button on my Stream Deck? Because I can easily strip those files of the edition with a regex search and replace in Notepad++.

9 hours ago, riveter said:

OK. Thanks for explaining that. So I have just one question. Those large xml files that are 90% edition text, does that cause any delay in the scripts when I press a button on my Stream Deck? Because I can easily strip those files of the edition with a regex search and replace in Notepad++.

It does not make any difference when executing scripts. AAO keeps the compiled code separate from the edition, and that's was is being parsed and run. You can see that on the editor dialog too, the white box is the edition, the grey box at the bottom is the compiled script.

With the edition removed, AAO needs less time to boot up and shut down, and it has a smaller memory footprint, but that's about it.

Edited September 30, 2025Sep 30 by Lorby_SI

11 hours ago, riveter said:

Because I can easily strip those files of the edition with a regex search and replace in Notepad++.

Or export them from AAO without the edition (there is a checkbox on the export dialog) and import them back in?

It only takes a few seconds to remove all <edition> tags in Notepad++. Thanks to Grok.

Quote

• In Notepad++ Open the Search and Replace feature
• Check the Regular Expression box
• Set the Search Pattern:
  • In the Find what field, enter:

    \s*<edition>[^<]*</edition>\s*\r?\n?
    

    • Explanation:
      • \s*: Matches zero or more whitespace characters (spaces, tabs) before the tag.
      • <edition>[^<]*</edition>: Matches the <edition> tag and its content.
      • \s*: Matches zero or more whitespace characters after the tag.
      • \r?\n?: Matches an optional carriage return (\r) and/or newline (\n) to capture the line break (works for both Windows \r\n and Unix \n line endings).
• Set the Replace Field:
  • Leave Replace with blank (empty string) to remove the matched content.
• Replace All:
  • Click Replace All. This removes the <edition> tags and their associated whitespace, including the newline, preventing most blank lines.

 

On 9/29/2025 at 7:22 PM, riveter said:

For example one file, A320Neo.xml, has over 1.1 million characters and takes so long to load into AAO that it hangs the program.

I've downloaded a similar file from fs.to, also made by Chris. It has 860,000 characters.

I cannot detect any "hang". From choosing the file to the selection dialog being shown it takes 3 tenths of a second. The actual import of the scripts into the AAO database takes 4 tenths of a second. In total I only waited for less than a single second (plus my own mouse clicks).

I'm sorry, but I fail to see any issue here. Are you sure that your harddrive is OK? Maybe you have a particularly aggressive Virus Scanner that is looking into every single character?

Edited October 3, 2025Oct 3 by Lorby_SI