Attached Link: http://www.senosoft.com

A new P3dO plugin, the so called PoserPyhton, is soon to arrive. This plugin from original work by TromNek is able to open a Poser file directly from P3dO and also to spawn a pyhton script from P3dO into Poser. Most of the plugin stuff are in fact TromNek scripts and the plugin itself is merely a wraper around them but the whole makes Poser quite cumfortable. You can read more about that plugin on my webpage. At the moment we're looking for someone to test the plugin with Poser Pro Pack since we both only have Poser 5. If you volunteer, please contact me here: http://www.senosoft.com/contact.php btw It is a free plugin Yarp

The following is a reply to the http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2074025 thread (also talking about the PoserPyhton script). > Hey Yarp, I checked, and it's possible to select say a cr2 file, and use the Windows "open with" Hi Ron, I will check this. I never tried myself since I was sure Poser couldn't do this. > Would your plugin have the option of choosing which Poser > installation would open the file? Yes and no. Because the plugin doesn't use Windows to open file but a socket listener. So the Poser with the socket listener active will be the one opened. But you can't have 2 listeners at the same time. > Does open with actually load the character in Poser 5? > What happens if you already haver Poser open with another > figure loaded? Sounds interesting Sure, worth trying. And yes it is quite feasable to have severall Open with pointing to each Poser installation. It could even work with P4. > I don't recall whether you listed some kind of uninstall > feature as a future addition Uninstallation of Poser files is next to come P3dO feature. I will take your remark under consideration. This feature will be a P3dO pro (paying) one. The reason why I didn't provided uninstall is as you pointed out you must be carefull not deleting core files (like Vicky .obj) and also the P3dO Poser parser must be tuned a little bit since it is still missing some file paths. Also coming is a Poser file Zipper (for distribution purpose) which will complete the P3dO Poser file installation process (unzipping, zipping, cleaning).

To clarify, I was wondering if "open with" by itself (nothing to do with P3dO) would work. It doesn't for Poser 4. Trying to open a .cr2 that way gives an error that it can't load the Poser2Lo/Default Guy, which isn't even my default (no figure), so it definitely sends Poser back to an infantile state. That's pretty much what I expected, since you can't load a raw .cr2 from the interface. Perhaps Poser 5 is different. Yes, deletion is a problem. I'd be uncomfortable even issuing a warning first, so I think I'd probably implement the uninstall caching strategy and maybe prompt after a period (15-30) days to actually delete the files. Daz has started including uninstallers for their products so that helps. You might have a config file with the most common Daz/CL geometry folders at least and exclude them from deletion. It's a tradeoff between power/convenience and potential danger. Of course, the zip installer is the ideal answer for new installations. Someone has said that they were working on a standalone utility like that. Personally, I hate parsing those damned Mac style relative paths. I wrote a utility to list texture/geometry files and it was a pain. I started thinking of a better way to do it but haven't played with it yet.

Thanks for the reply, Yarp. I wasn't the one who asked about uninstall, but that's ok. I'm still a bit leery about Poser uninstall utilities. If we had one, it should definately have a warning feature and put the deleted stuff into a temporary folder where you could rescue it.

To clarify, I was wondering if "open with" by itself (nothing to do with P3dO) would work So was I, it is worth trying with P5. The config file for most common files is a good idea, all files will be proposed for deletion but those special ones will require a confirmation. And yes I also think it is dangerous to definitely delete some files (like objs), I still wonder how to cope with this and windows.

The poser python plugin will only work if Poser 5 or ProPack is currently running and is running the 'Receiver' python script that comes with the plugin.

So you can run what ever installation of Poser 5 or ProPack you want, run the 'Receiver' script and p3do will 'Open with Poser' in that one.

If you currently have a cr2 loaded in poser and you p3do->'Open with Poser' another cr2, it will add it to the scene.

The .cr2 will open geometries and materials from anywhere if they have full path names specified in the cr2. If not it will look in the current Runtime active in Poser. This has nothing to do with the plugin, it's all cr2 stuff.

Message edited on: 01/13/2005 13:54

I don't think there's an easy answer. Compressing the files before storing in the uninstall folder will save a lot of space fo P4 users at least (except for textures), so they could keep them for a good while before actually deleting them. Converting the textures to jpeg 2000 would even save space on those with minimal quality loss. Besides .obj files, some textures, especially reflection maps might be used by multiple items as well and could cause problems. The safest way I can think of would be to mimic COM or the registry and implement some form of reference counting or a database. It would be time consuming at first, you'ld have to log every reference in every file. Then, you could warn if a file referenced in other files was about to be deleted. Of course, the problem is maintaining it. The user would have to do every install/uninstall through P3dO or update manually for outside installs. The only way around that would be to have an agent that ran at startup and monitored the Poser runtime(s) for changes. It would be doable but not worth the trouble probably. The Win32 api doesn't help much with directory monitoring though the .NET framework has nice functions for that. People should have backups but you can bet that someone will delete all their V2 stuff when they get V3 and then change their minds and find out they have no backup. Of course they could delete the stuff carelessly using Windows as well but one or two may blame you, no matter how many safeguards and warnings you build in. As long as you have an explicit warning and a disclaimer, that's about all you can do. Heck, they can use P3dO right now to delete a Daz .obj I assume, so if you replace the delete option with a safer uninstall, it's actually better in a way. I think maybe I'd simply store the files and tell them where the folder is with no real deletion capability at all, maybe have a button to open that folder in Windows Explorer for convenience but they have to do the actual deletion manually or move the files if they want to keep them.

People should have backups but you can bet that someone > will delete all their V2 stuff when they get V3 and then > change their minds and find out they have no backup Of course yes. As you say there's no easy answer. > if you replace the delete option with a safer uninstall, > it's actually better in a way On the contrary this is where the problem comes since it is much easier to delete severall files at a time and thus easier to make a mistake. Should a skilled user delete files by hand he would make few mistakes, but should he use such a tool he would save a lot of time but for sure make some errors. Those users know how to setup a Poser file again. Now an unskilled user would probably delete his core .obj without being really aware of what he does. The problem is unskilled users, it is P3dO responsibility to warn them, others should take their own responsability and what they can do with Windows Explorer they'd better do it in only one delete command. Severall solutions: - A delete wizard that would explain users what they should delete and what they shouldn't ? - Disabling that feature untill the user considers himself as skilled enough - Having the feature embedded in a plugin only available in place that only skilled users visit

I've been working indepth with Poser for a few years, and still get nervous when it comes to deleting something. In the end, the safest method I've found is to actually install the item to a temporary folder to see just which files are involved. Then I manually delete the corresponding files from my Poser installation. Even then I've made a few mistakes, but I do have my original files backed up to CD/DVD. And I have a catalogue program which can help me find any needed original file.

I agree that in a way, giving people more power might it easier to do more damage. That's why I suggest that the function not actually delete anything and strongly advise them not to delete the archived files until they are sure they don't need them. With a one click restore, they can easily recover from mistakes as long as they follow that advice. In a way, strange as it may sound, I think it could be a teaching tool since they will be able to see the potential damage from permanently deleting stuff they don't understand. "explain users what they should delete and what they shouldn't?" Definitely that would be good, maybe with some diagrams showing how the files are linked and some info on how some files are used by many Poser items. "Disabling that feature untill the user considers himself as skilled enough" True. It's not unusual to have an "expert" mode. I don't know, maybe I'd have the delete archive in "normal" mode and actually allow deletion in "expert" mode. No way to control whether they actuallr are expert or not unless you want to make them pass a test before they can get to expert mode :-) I know whatever you come up with will be as great as the rest of P3dO. I'm off to test the latest version. Looking forward to seeing what you create.

Not an easy tool in the end. Like many of my other tools this one will probably grow in features until everybody find what he is looking for. What can be retained from your experience and the one of Ron too, is that you'd like to have a restore feature. This will be available with the first version.