[Proposal] Naev Information Hub

[bobbens]

As mentioned in Discord, we need a better way to search and find ships / outfits. The potential solution is mentioned in #1032 .

Issue

There is no sort of centralized source for information and lore in Naev. The player has to rely on their memory and the ship log. This is less than ideal.

Core Concept

We should add a sort of information hub or encyclopedia in Naev. Tooltips could reference things in it and it could get unlocked as you play. It would also allow you to see what outfits you've found in-game so far, and where they are sold or how to get them. Faction lore (updated as you play) and other important tidbits could be added as you encounter them.

Implementation Idea

1. Add it to the info menu as a tab, it would then have subtabs or different sections.
2. Each entry would consist of a unique text id, translatable title, and translatable block of text (markdown [Proposal] Markdown Support #1029 ).
3. There would be a simple hierarchy.
4. Entries would be saved as markdown (.md) with some metadata at the top indicating id / title / parent / etc. This would allow it to theoretically be exported directly to the website or wiki (at least the basic information).
5. Markdown could be rendered to Lua code that could call our toolkit functions.
6. Entries could also be in Lua (.lua) to enable custom things displaying outfit information and where to buy them.
7. Missions / events would be able to enable/disable entries.

Possible Alternatives

1. Have missions directly add entries. This would allow more flexibility such as writing anything we want whenever, but it would cause us to have to save lots more information, and if we change it, it wouldn't be reflected in existing save files.
2. Just use the online wiki. This is harder to deal with spoilers and less immersive. Proposal is an all-in-one solution, and could be used to export data to a wiki or whatever.

Potential Issues

1. We'll need a markdown library. I would think official commonmark C library would probably be a best bet.
2. We'll have to limit what we support or it'll be a mess. Just having the markdown renderer spit errors for unsupported stuff should be good enough though.

Related Issues

1. [Proposal] Markdown Support #1029
2. [Proposal] Tooltips #1032
3. [proposal] Improve the info menu #1720