Update

This is just a copy of the old description, to be updated.

What is mHud?

It's an add-on for displaying your health and mana/energy/rage mid screen (normally). The bars and text are not unit frames, it's information only, so clicking on them will not do anything. In practice you click whats behind the bars/indicators.

Way use a hud?

It helps you to stay alive, like a mirror in your car lets you know there is a car pulling up behind you. You don't stare at the mirror all the time, but you notice the change beside your main focus area. Personally I'm having a hard time surviving without a hud, since I wrote my first one a year ago. That one was primitive with no in-game configuration, this one should be a lot more user friendly.

Forum

Official thread

Over all design

The addon uses a few Ace3 libraries in its minimal state, and modules include the extra libraries they need. In the root directory there is a bat file (currently .txt, rename it to .bat) to split the modules into separate addon directories. This will enable users to disable modules they don't want before entering world.

Configuration code for all the modules is completely separated from the runtime code. By disabling the Configuration module, you should saving memory and CPU time for all modules. The drawback of the way it is implemented; the Configuration modules *.xml needs to include all modules, even 3rd party ATM.

Modules

Handler modules

The information gathering modules, Marked with an orange color in the AddOn List.

Health
Power - Mana / Rage / Energy / Focus
ComboPoints
DruidMana - LibDruidMana-1.0 (not needed after wow 3.0)
Threat - (rewrite needed)

Enchant Modules

These modules use handlers to present information.

Abyss - Give you an indicator of your lowest health within the last 10 seconds.
Background - A background texture to your bar. Can have separate texture, color, alpha etc.
Configuration - Graphical configuration of mHud and its modules.
DogTag - LibDogTag-2.0.
EnergyTicker - An overlaying spike on your bar.
Frame - A texture overlaying your bars to clearly separate them.
GradiantAlpha - See Color/Alpha Templates
GradiantColor - See Color/Alpha Templates
ManaTicker - An overlaying spike on your bar.

Skin modules

Textures and one or more layout schemes. Marked with a light green color in the AddOn List.

cArch - A new simple arched texture, the default scheme has player + target
dArch - The defaults from the last last version of mHud

Color/Alpha Templates

Allows smooth transaction between colors and alphas.
Uses a common template system where modules register their defaults.
Users can modify defaults, create own and reset to factory defaults.
Most modules have optional deps. on these 2 modules.

Skins

Comes with a few skins, this addon is supposed to work "out of the box". It should be fairly easy for a 3rd party to create and publish own skins as modules. To create a new skin

Create a folder with the name of your skin ie: mHud_MySkin
Create MySkin.lua
Create MySkin.toc
Add your textures, if any, to your directory
- (some link to example)

Variables:

skin.defaults - This will merge with mHuds own defaults to form the defaults table sendt to [[AceDB-3.0]]
skin.profiles.XXX - Contains finished schemes, can be copied directly from saved variables (more or less). XXX represents the scheme name.
skin.profiles.Default - The default scheme is required.
skin.description.XXX - Description of this scheme. XXX represents the scheme name.

Configuration

Uses [[AceGUI-3.0]] as customizing tool, /mhud to bring it up. The customizing level is quite high, making the configuration equally large.

Organization

Home
- Welcome
- Global settings - At the moment, only disabling of helper descriptions.
- Edit mode
Bars
- BarX - The basic settings and removal of the bar
  - Size & Position
  - Look & Feel
  - (Modules expands these menus)
Skins - Changing of skins
Modules - Soft enabling/disabling
- (Global module configurations)
Handlers - A simple list of the active handler modules
Profiles - [[AceDBOptions-3.0]]

Create your own textures

One of the main reasons for creating this add-on, was for people to create their own personal hud.

Download and install the latest version of mHud.
Create your bar in a photo editor
Picture size must be 2^n * 2^m, eks: 256x512
Use gray tones only, this will allow the add-on to change the colors.
- White give a strong color
- Black is transparent
Save it as a .PNG file, don't use space etc. in the filename.
Use a PNG to BLP converter, personaly i used BLPConverter. Caution: It's an EXE file, I can not in any guarantee it's not a key logger or other evil stuff.
Save one BLP image in a safe place, somewhere in the AddOns directory where no program will delete it.
In the mHud directory, open the cArch/cArch_texture.lua in your favorite text editor.
Simply duplicate one of the statusbar lines and change the path and name of the texture.
Save the file, and exit the editor.
Copy the cArch/cArch_texture.lua file to the same place you keep your original BLP texture, so you have a backup.

If you prefer TGA-files, here is another HowTo.

Another way to do it with TGAs: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=1511942093&sid=1

My own Paint Shop Pro images: pspimages.zip Don't have PS, but I'm confident it's possible to convert the images some how. PSPs PS export converts the vector layers to raster, leaving it "useless".