TacoTip

TacoTip is a character, item and guild tooltip enhancement that runs on every World of Warcraft engine family from one build — no per-client downloads, no "which version do I install" question:

This release replaces the previous Classic-only TacoTip. It is the same addon, continued — your existing configuration carries over, and the GearScore numbers you are used to are unchanged on the Classic clients. What is new is that the identical build now also works on WoW Forever and Retail.

What's New in 0.7.8

This is the first cross-engine release. Highlights; full detail in CHANGELOG.md:

• One build, five client families. The addon previously loaded twice, failed to load on Titanforge, and silently fell back to stock Blizzard tooltips on TBC Anniversary and Titanforge. All fixed.

• Retail and WoW Forever now actually work. Two file-scope defects left those clients running half the addon — an unguarded OnTooltipSetUnit hook that raised before the rest of main.lua could load, and an invalid CreateFrame("Texture", ...) call. Neither is visible on the Classic family, which is why it only ever surfaced on modern clients.

• GearScore bracket corrected on WoW Forever. Forever is a Classic-like client (level cap 60) and had been inheriting Retail's 1000 bracket, inflating every score 5x and flattening the quality colour ramp into a single band.

• The 3D portrait stopped blinking. It was being destroyed and reloaded roughly twice a second while hovering a unit frame. PlayerModel:SetUnit loads asynchronously, so every teardown produced a visible flash.

• A stray specialization icon no longer appears on the wrong character. Retail / WoW Forever only; the Classic icon path was never affected.

• Pawn no longer spams your chat frame. The scale library is resolved per client rather than guessed. The old guess spammed ScaleName must be the name of an existing scale on every character tooltip — the one defect pcall could not silence, because Pawn reports it by writing to the chat frame.

• /tacotip diag so a partial load is diagnosable instead of reporting "try /reload".

• Classic Era / Season of Discovery (SoD): Interface 11509

• The Burning Crusade (TBC) Classic Anniversary: Interface 20506

• WotLK Titanforge: Interface 38002

• WoW Forever: Interface 16001

• Retail / Live (The War Within & Midnight): Interfaces 110002, 110100, 110200, 120000, 120100

Key Features & Architecture

1. Multi-Engine Client Detection:

   • Powered by LibForeverInspector with runtime client gates: IsClassic(), IsTBC(), IsWotlk(), IsForever(), and IsRetail(), plus IsUnknown().
   • Identity is resolved from WOW_PROJECT_ID (distinct per Classic client) with the interface version used only to separate WoW Forever from Retail, which share WOW_PROJECT_MAINLINE.
   • The interface number is read from whichever GetBuildInfo() return slot is numeric, so detection does not depend on the return layout, which is only documented for Retail and Forever.
   • Exposes CI.family (classicEra / tbc / titanforge / forever / retail / unknown) and a CI.caps capability snapshot.
   • An unrecognised client resolves to family == "unknown" rather than silently inheriting a default.
   • Backward-compatible alias LibStub("LibClassicInspector") provided for existing modules, registered with a minor version.

2. Adaptive GearScore & Item Level Engine:

   • Client-aware quality bracket sizing: 200 for Classic Era and WoW Forever, 400 for TBC, 1000 for Titanforge and Retail.
   • WoW Forever is a Classic-like client (level cap 60, no level scaling) and previously inherited the 1000 default, which inflated every score 5x and collapsed the colour ramp into a single band.
   • The bracket is a pure mapping: GS_Quality is keyed off BRACKET_SIZE at load and item level passes through raw, so each client gets the correct colour ramp with no formula change.
   • Dynamic C_Item.GetItemInfo and GetItemInfo resolution with instant caching.
   • Support for Retail / Live stat calculations and item comparison.

3. Pawn Integration:

   • The scale library is resolved per client, never hardcoded. Pawn's Pawn.toc gates its two providers by game type — AskMrRobot.lua is [AllowLoadGameType mainline] ("MrRobot", Retail + WoW Forever) and ClassicHawsJon.lua is [AllowLoadGameType classic] ("Classic", Vanilla/TBC/Wrath) — so exactly one exists per client and the correct prefix differs between them.
   • Resolution reads Pawn's own globals, PawnScaleProviders and PawnCommon.Scales, and is completely silent. Pawn's own API cannot be asked: PawnIsScaleVisible and PawnGetScaleColor report an unknown name through VgerCore.Fail, which does not raise a Lua error but writes straight to DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME, so pcall cannot suppress it. PawnGetScaleColor is therefore only ever called with a name already proven to exist in PawnCommon.Scales; when none matches, the colour is skipped.
   • Score lookups go through PawnGetSingleValueFromItem, which answers 0 for an unknown name and never calls VgerCore.Fail, so both libraries are tried and the score works on every client.
   • Version detection supporting modern PawnLastUpdatedVersion and legacy PawnClassicLastUpdatedVersion.

4. Zero-Allocation Tooltip Pipeline:

   • Static pooled record buffers (pooledLinesToAdd, pooledTooltipText, pooledPlayerText) eliminating garbage collection pressure on high-frequency mouseovers.
   • Integer-floored color formatting (makeColorCode) strictly preventing Lua 5.3+ float representation errors.
   • Dynamic visual clearing (clearTooltipVisuals) isolating non-unit tooltips (items, spells, map POIs) from stale unit overlays.
   • Tooltip hooking selects on whether the tooltip actually runs the data pipeline (probing IsTooltipType / GetPrimaryTooltipData, which come from TooltipDataHandlerMixin), not on whether TooltipDataProcessor merely exists. TBC Anniversary and Titanforge define the processor but do not mix in the handler, so a presence-only test registered a callback that never fired and both clients showed stock Blizzard tooltips.
   • Both hook paths are registered as insurance; the duplicate is inert because Blizzard's pipeline-client tooltips do not fire OnTooltipSetUnit / OnTooltipSetItem.
   • tooltip_max_width is implemented by capping the line FontString widths, since GameTooltip has no SetMaximumWidth on any supported client.

5. Universal Options UI:

   • Supports modern Settings.RegisterCanvasLayoutCategory and legacy InterfaceOptions_AddCategory.
   • Client-adaptive toggles (e.g. Achievement Points toggle dynamically enabled on Titanforge, Retail, and Forever; cleanly hidden on Classic Era / TBC).

6. Talents & Specializations:

   • Per-client talent data that does not depend on the loadDeprecationFallbacks CVar:
     • Classic Era / TBC Anniversary / Titanforge — points are the sum of each talent's rank within a tab, read via C_SpecializationInfo.GetTalentInfo (query form specializationIndex + talentIndex, which is what VanillaTalentFrameBase.lua uses on all three). This is the algorithm from the known-good Classic addon.
     • WoW Forever / Retail — per-specialization pointsSpent + previewPointsSpent from C_SpecializationInfo.GetSpecializationInfo, which has an identical 7-argument signature and 10-value return on all five clients.
   • Dual specialization is gated by hasDualSpec (isWotlk or isTBC or (C_SpecializationInfo ~= nil) or (_G.GetNumTalentGroups ~= nil)), so it is available on Classic Era, TBC Anniversary and Titanforge and refused where unsupported. The definition matches the known-good Classic addon, with the last term read through _G so it is nil-safe.
   • Per-group data throughout: GetTalentPoints / GetSpecialization accept a group, the inspect cache holds talentPoints[group][tab] and specIndexByGroup[group], and the modern resolver uses GetSpecialization(isInspect, isPet, groupIndex, 1) — the only group-aware form, since GetInspectSpecialization(unit) takes just a unit and cannot tell group 1 from group 2.
   • GetActiveTalentGroup resolves the real active group for self and inspected units, so the greyed specialization is always the inactive one.
   • GetSpecialization returns a 1-based index, not a specID. The modern clients previously returned GetSpecialization() (an ID such as 72), which made spec_table[class][72] nil and removed the entire specialization line on Retail and Forever.
   • Icons resolve per client. On Classic they come from a static talent table ported verbatim from LibClassicInspector (~1840 records) as numeric fileIDs, inlined with tostring() because a |T escape accepts a fileID as well as a texture path. Each expansion selects its own set: Classic Era 18 talents in Warrior tab 1 (Vanilla), TBC Anniversary 23 (TBC), Titanforge 31 (WotLK, Death Knight included). On Retail/Forever they come from GetTalentInfo using the tier/column query form [Family]TalentFrameBase.lua uses, drawn with a Texture overlay since a fileID cannot go in a |T escape.

7. Localization:

   • Every Locale/*.lua registers its table into TACOTIP_LOCALES under its own code; enUS.lua is the single selector and exposes TacoTipApplyLocale().
   • Resolution order: TacoTipConfig.locale_override (always wins) → WotLK Titanforge, pinned to zhCN → the client language when a table ships for it → English. Titanforge is the Chinese build of WotLK, so it is pinned rather than trusting GetLocale(). English is both the default and the per-key fallback every other language layers over.
   • Selection is re-applied on ADDON_LOADED, because addon files run before WoW populates SavedVariables, so TacoTipConfig.locale_override is unreadable during file execution.
   • TacoTipApplyLocale mutates TACOTIP_LOCALE in place so the local L bindings in main.lua / gearscore.lua / options.lua observe the override.
   • enGB maps onto enUS. Per-client font filtering hides CJK fonts on non-CJK clients and drops third-party Details fonts.
   • Specialization names come from the library's built-in table on the Classic family, and from the client's own localized GetSpecializationInfo on Retail and Forever. The previous per-locale TACOTIP_SPEC_NAMES / TACOTIP_SPEC_ICONS lookups were removed: nothing ever wrote those globals, so they were always nil and the comments claiming they honoured the language override were false.

Directory Structure

TacoTip_Forever/
├── Libs/
│   ├── LibStub/
│   ├── CallbackHandler-1.0/
│   ├── LibForeverInspector/
│   └── LibDetours-1.0/
├── Locale/
│   ├── enUS.lua (Source of Truth)
│   ├── deDE.lua, esES.lua, esMX.lua, frFR.lua, itIT.lua,
│   └── koKR.lua, ptBR.lua, ruRU.lua, zhCN.lua, zhTW.lua
├── textures.lua
├── gearscore.lua
├── pawn.lua
├── options.lua
├── main.lua
├── TacoTip.toc
└── Tests/                     (not shipped — opt-in)
    ├── TacoTip_Forever_Tests.lua
    ├── TacoTipTests.toc
    └── harness/               plain-Lua verification, no game client needed
        ├── detect_test.lua, locale_test.lua, font_test.lua,
        ├── load_test.lua, options_test.lua, tooltip_test.lua,
        └── talent_check.lua

The .toc filename must match the addon folder name — that is a hard requirement of the loader, not a convention. This addon is shipped as TacoTip/TacoTip.toc, replacing the previous Classic-only TacoTip. Nothing in the code depends on the name: main.lua takes its table from _G[addOnName] (...), so the folder name only ever has to match the .toc.

Only TacoTip.toc is shipped, and there must be exactly one. An earlier revision carried a second, byte-identical .toc; because WoW loads every .toc in an addon folder, that executed the whole addon twice on every client and registered the tooltip hooks twice.

Troubleshooting

If something looks inert, run this first:

/tacotip diag

It reports the version, whether main.lua finished loading, the last load stage reached, the detected client family and interface, the type of each key global (TacoTip_CustomPosEnable, TT.ApplyTooltipAppearance, TT.OpenOptionsPanel, TT.RefreshOptionsUI, TT.SyncTooltipMover), the GearScore bracket and the active locale.

load OK: NO means main.lua raised an error while loading. main.lua is the last file in the toc and defines the tooltip mover at its very end, so a partial load leaves the options frame fully working while the mover, the tooltip pipeline and the overlays are all silently missing. The reported stage names the region to look at. A reload does not fix this — install a Lua error handler (BugSack or Swatter) and read the error it captures.

Other slash commands: /tacotip opens the options, /tacotip custom shows the tooltip mover, /tacotip save saves the current mover position, /tacotip default clears the custom position, /tacotip anchor <corner> sets the anchor.

Verification & Testing

• Luacheck Static Analysis:

  luacheck TacoTip_Forever/
  # Result: 0 warnings / 0 errors

Note this is a weak gate for cross-client work: read_globals pre-declares the API surface, so luacheck is structurally incapable of detecting an API that is missing on a given client.

• Offline harness (no game client required). Loads the real addon files against a mocked WoW environment — see Tests/harness/README.md:

  lua5.1 Tests/harness/detect_test.lua   # client detection, all 5 families
  lua5.1 Tests/harness/locale_test.lua   # locale registry, selection, override, Titanforge pin
  lua5.1 Tests/harness/font_test.lua     # per-client font filtering
  lua5.1 Tests/harness/load_test.lua 2 11509 slot4 classicEra 200 ERA

  lua5.1 Tests/harness/options_test.lua 2 11509 ERA
  lua5.1 Tests/harness/settings_test.lua 2 11509 CLASSIC_ERA legacy settings pawn
  lua5.1 Tests/harness/tooltip_test.lua 2 11509 CLASSIC_ERA
  lua5.1 Tests/harness/tooltip_test.lua 1 120100 RETAIL pipeline
  lua5.1 Tests/harness/talent_check.lua 11 38002 TITANFORGE

The load harness runs each client under both plausible GetBuildInfo() return layouts, so nothing depends on which slot carries the interface number on the Classic clients — a question the Blizzard source does not settle.

To run the whole matrix (50 invocations across all five clients, both registration paths and both Pawn states):

  bash TacoTip_Forever/Tests/harness/run_all.sh

options_test builds all four options pages on every client and under every capability permutation (no Settings namespace, no ColorPickerFrame, no LibSharedMedia, and all three missing at once), which is what covers the legacy InterfaceOptions_AddCategory path and optional-dependency degradation. tooltip_test asserts the enhancement pipeline actually emits GearScore / iLvl / specialization lines, through both the script hooks used on the Classic family and the TooltipDataProcessor post-calls used on Retail and WoW Forever, and asserts the dual-spec readout per group with inline |T talent icons and correct active/inactive colouring. talent_check verifies the ported static talent table resolves real icons for each expansion.

On mock-derived assertions. A mock cannot settle Blizzard's exact shim return shapes, so asserting numbers the mock itself invented only proves the mock agrees with itself. The talent tests therefore assert the version-independent invariant instead: ranks are small integers, icon values are 6-digit fileIDs, and the rendered readout must be the former and never the latter. That is precisely the bug this release fixes, and it is now caught by a check that cannot be satisfied by a self-consistent mock.

• WoWUnit In-Game Test Suite (opt-in). Copy Tests/ to Interface/AddOns/TacoTipTests/, enable it alongside the addon, then type /tttest. 11 suites:
  • TacoTip-Core
  • TacoTip-Config
  • TacoTip-Borders
  • TacoTip-Portrait
  • TacoTip-Guild
  • TacoTip-Stats
  • TacoTip-Mover
  • TacoTip-Modules
  • TacoTip-MinimapAndAnchor
  • TacoTip-Lifecycle
  • TacoTip-Client (detection, alias, locale registry, override including the Titanforge zhCN pin, font filter, and cross-engine talent point / spec index / active-group invariants)