RPTools.net

Is it possible to have maptool receive input from an external program and/or output to an external program? If so, would it have to be a program built with a certain language, or would any programming language work with the proper scripting?

Are you talking in theory or right now? Right now, technically no, although in my Fork i do have requestURL & sendURL so that provides a partial RESTful service but has to be initiated from MapTool. Craig had started on a "web engine" as well but it's POC. My fork also reads Hero Lab portfolios, so that is a form of "input from another source/program". It also can post an syrinscape URI which is an example of "output to another program"...

With that said, MT is open source, so you could build an API for communication to/from MT. Hard to answer anything more with more details.

Thanks, I am planning on learning some programming and I want to eventually make a inventory tracker/character sheet program that can be called upon by maptool. This is going to be part of a larger project of building a beastly gaming table and I hope to make the program decently graphical as to be displayed on small tablets built into the table.

It may be ambitious if you are just starting out learning to program. You will need to make modifications to MapTool so you might as well stick with Java for your solutions. The WebAPI may be the way to go as well. I don't know where Craig left off with it but it's a start: https://github.com/RPTools/maptool/tree/webapi

*Note: That branch is based on 1.4.0.0 so you would have to merge it with 1.4.0.5 or the 1.4.1 branch if you want the latest code...

It's more of an side goal, I don't expect to do it overnight xD I want to learn programming and when I start learning something new I set a goal that coincides with one of my interests as sort of a motivation to continue on when it gets tough. So I think I will start researching java courses, thanks!