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yaze/docs/internal/plans/message_system_improvement_plan.md

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# Message System Improvement Plan
**Status**: Proposal
**Last Updated**: 2025-11-21
This document outlines a plan to enhance the dialogue editing capabilities of YAZE, focusing on translation workflows and data portability.
## 1. JSON Import/Export
**Goal**: Enable external editing and version control of text.
* **Format**:
```json
[
{
"id": 0,
"address": 917504,
"text": "[W:00][SPD:00]Welcome to [D:05]...",
"context": "Uncle dying in sewers"
}
]
```
* **Implementation**:
* Add `SerializeMessages()` and `DeserializeMessages()` to `MessageData`.
* Integrate with the existing CLI `export` commands.
## 2. Translation Workspace
**Goal**: Facilitate translating the game into new languages.
* **Side-by-Side View**: Show the original text (Reference) next to the editable text (Translation).
* **Reference Source**: Allow loading a second "Reference ROM" or a JSON file to serve as the source text.
* **Dictionary Management**:
* **Auto-Optimization**: Analyze the full translated text to propose a *new* optimal dictionary for that language.
* **Manual Editing**: Allow users to define custom dictionary entries.
## 3. Expanded Text Support
**Goal**: Break free from vanilla size limits.
* **Repointing**: Allow the text blocks to be moved to expanded ROM space (Banks 10+).
* **Bank Management**: Handle bank switching commands automatically when text exceeds 64KB.
## 4. Search & Replace
**Goal**: Global editing operations.
* **Regex Support**: Advanced search across all messages.
* **Batch Replace**: "Replace 'Hyrule' with 'Lorule' in all messages".
## 5. Scripting Integration
**Goal**: Allow procedural generation of text.
* **Lua/Python API**: Expose message data to the scripting engine.
* **Usage**: "Generate 100 variations of the shopkeeper dialogue".