Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=2104121

Please notice the lack of exclamation marks up in the subject. They are more than made up for in the linked Forum post. We are gnashing our teeth and waving our pitchforks instead of our wallets. Not good. Not good at all. If you want our continued business and goodwill, you might want to read the thread and think about how you name and package your files. When hiking, it is a lot easier to appreciate the view without the grain of sand in the boot. Surely you want us to appreciate your products without getting blisters from renaming all the files? Carolly

I second that... it's getting to the stage where i seriously reconsider buying anything else from a merchant that does it. Jack

I hate that cutesy naming stuff, too. Empty spaces, exclamation marks, underbars, etc. I always rename them.

DAZ released a monster with their !INJs.

I manually install EVERY zip, & put things where I want them as well. I sub-folder & try to compact My runtime in P5 as much as possible. I put My WIP, & My new purchases @ the top.... yes, using !!!!! & +++, & spaces. Altho, I NEVER release anything like that... as it burns My ass as well. ~Thomas

++++++++++++++++++++++ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey, how come my last post didn't go to the top of this thread?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!

heh heh

We can manually rename and reorganize, but it is a waste of our time... time which is precious and irreplaceable. It is also irritating. Why annoy a consumer for the sake of... what? Ego gratification? If your product is that good, we WILL use it, and joyfully. Carolly

I suspect many people do it to push the item to the top of their own runtimes. So it's easy to find while they're working on it. Then they don't bother to change the folder names when they package it for sale.

Or maybe they want it to be easy for us to find. Perhaps too many clueless newbies have e-mailed them, asking where to find their purchases?

Just one comment of explanation folks. In our architecture packs we usually prefix the presets with "!". Sorry if it irritates but we do this to separate the presets from the body of the prop items in the prop folder. The intention is to make it easier for the user. Chris

But that info is in the readmes. One exclamation mark I might believe was accidentally left... but a plethora? When there are more exclamation marks than fingers, you know somebody's ego is involved. harumph! Carolly

Yes, the info is in the readmes. But a lot of people don't read them. At least judging from the questions posted to the Poser forum.

When there are more exclamation marks than fingers, you know somebody's ego is involved.

I don't think that's necessarily true. So many people are using !! now that it's not enough to make a file pop to the top.

And that, I think, is a big part of the problem. We've a !!!! arms race going here. Even it is just to make it easier for the merchant to find the product while working on it on his own hard drive, it should be fixed before it's put in the store. It's getting ridiculous.

My personal preference is for all the files related to the product to be similarly named, so they are close to each other in my runtime. When you've got hundreds of items in your runtime, you don't want to be scrolling up and down for the MATs, INJs, poses, etc. For example, I renamed all my MilCat folders. Instead of DAZ MilCat and MAT MilCat, which results in a lot of real estate between the folders, I call the the folders DAZ MilCat Poses and DAZ MilCat MATs. That way, they are right next to each other in my runtime. I'm likely to be applying poses and textures at the same time, so that's convenient for me.

Maybe Poser 6 will offer the ability to rename files and folder "on the fly"...

chrisjol, I think what you are saying is fine. I personally have no problem with special characters being used within the folder to organize, like you are saying. It is just in the folder name. What is ironic, is until I go on a renaming fest, I usually can't find any of those folders. with so many variations, there is no alphabetical sense if you don't know how many ! are first, so you end up have 20 some folders that are in sense out of order. We search by the alphabet, people. I just wish ALL the stores would institute a policy that wuoldn't allow this.

Chrisjol, Then what about deciding upon characters or abbreviations to distinguish and group like items... if presets had a special symbol it wouldn't matter if they were top or bottom in the list, they'd be together and we'd recognize them as the presets. Sort of like the difference between a hand and a bunch of fingers? something like the @ which looks all-encompassing. If those symbols didn't involve the deservedly maligned exclamation marks, it would separate logic from foolishness. Carolly

I've been using a variation of the recommended scheme; when possible my clothing names start with the figure, then contain a collection name, then go to specific item name. The textures and MAT poses follow the same order; complete item name then a specific MAT name. The downside is ending up with either names that are too long to comfortably display, or names that are as easy to read as US Navy acronyms. As long as your product is in its own folder you can order it with ordinary alpha characters. There is no reason for the exclamation point other than trying to put yourself in front of competitors -- and all it achieves there is confusion and annoyance.