Widget vs PassageReady/PassageDone

Question

Hey all,

Short version: is there s technical difference between updating a set of variables through a widget or in a PassageReady passage?

Long version: In my WIP, the player character can change appearance a lot, up to and including gender, through the choices they make. I'd like to keep descriptions (pronouns, text distributions, etc) updated throughout so they're accurate in conversations and when the player looks at him/herself. Right now, I have them listed in a PassageReady passage, but reverse engineering another project brought to attention using widgets for the same effect. To me, it looks like I would be typing <<pronoun>> instead of $pronoun in text.

Is there any real difference mechanically/technically to do one or the other?

Answer 1

By default the contents of the PassageReady special passage only gets processed a single time for each Passage Transition.

Where as the contents of a <<widget>> gets execute each time you call it, which can be as many times as you want within a Passage Transition, and it can also be called from an interactive element (like a <<link>> that doesn't result in a Passage Transition)

In your use-case this allows for the displayed data to be updated/refreshed without the need of a Passage Transition.