I was just reading the comments on Poser Group enhancements.

I don't have a lot of Poser experience, but I now have enough to think we should be stumping for a Poser6 that is smart enough to find it's own damn files, at least within Poser6's content.

As I write this, I am attempting to load Fairytale Castle into Poser5.
I have had to provide the whereabouts of about 6 files. SO FAR!

The worst is 3 or 4 of the files were in the folder displayed where it got the previous files.

That's a pretty dumb program for this day and age.

If you're looking for something to get outraged about, this should work. :-)

Jim

Don't get mad get even, go find CorrectReference or CorrectReferencePro & run it on your runtime to fix the problems http://www.hogsoft.com ps they happen in Poser4 too so don't be surprised if it happens in Poser6 as well.

Did you move those files around manually or did the DAZ installer place them incorrectly - OR - maybe the references in the cr2 are wrong to begin with?

Hi-

Lucifer-
Thanks for the Hogsoft link. They appear to have a couple of utilities, that could be useful. In addition to Cross Reference Pro, I thought the Poser file interface seemed to have possibilities.

Thank you very much. I'll quite carping now. :-)

Netherworks -
I'm to puny a user to get creative with those convoluted Poser files. I just install.exe 'em or unzip them to the poser directory as indicated.

If I knew how to really reorganize them, I certainly wouldn't hesitate. I'd like the categories to be the same as the ones I chose for filing my uninstalled content files. ie., People&Clothing, Animals, Plants, Architecture, Props, etc.

Isn't it grand an industry can be born dedicated to compensating for another's mediocre attempt. :-)

Again thank you both for taking an interest and the time to comment.

Jim

If DAZ has a mistake in the installer (this would hardly be the first time), why are you blaming CL for the problem? Why do you expect CL to fix it? They are different companies. Most companies don't provide product support for anybody else... nor should they be expected to fix problems perpetrated by another company. Go over to DAZ (they DO have forums, you know!) and ask there why the file doesn't load correctly. The merchant who made it and the company which tucked it into the installer package are the ones responsible for making sure that the files go into the right places. Personally, I don't use DAZ installers for anything. Got too damned tired of things being wrong or unfindable or slopped all over creation. I use "extract" to dump the files into a temporary folder, and then use MacInstaller to place them where I want them. You can also do this by hand. DAZ includes a readme with each file. It doesn't say how to actually use the product but always lists what files are included and where they should go. Carolly

PS: why should we be looking for something to get outraged about? Given Iraq, the Sudan, the approval of torture, and oily scumbags trying to drill in the arctic REFUGE, there are plenty of outrages needing our energy. And if you do feel the urge to rouse rabble, why do it over a trivial and false issue? Carolly

Hi hauksdottir

You missed a small point, I had no knowledge of CL.
It was Lucifer that suggested the software to me. I didn't know it existed.

To re-express myself, I still hold Poser to be at fault. At the very least, Poser should be capable of searching in it's own files and content for something before it starts begging for my help.

I don't have enough experience, so I'm not sure, but I don't believe Poser remembers where any file is that I find for it.

Jim :-)

And Poser is not at fault. You are ignoring a few not-so-small points... such as that you can store files not only outside Poser, but in other partitions and even on other computers. Right now I'm experimenting with having Poser on a Mac Mini accessing my old Runtime on a G4... and once I get this router thing set up, it ought to find the characters I made on the Windows box too. If people have multiple Runtimes, for multiple projects, how is Poser to know which version of a character they are looking for? Right now Judy is resting on 3 machines: if Poser needs a texture for a character pack, I would rather that it asked, rather than that it assumed. Textures don't need to be "installed" at all... and it keeps a leaner, lighter, faster Runtime if you don't fill it with useless MATfiles and extra textures. And you missed my essential point. If the DAZ installer doesn't put the files in the right place, it is a DAZ problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They have a Forum. If it was a CL installer, I'd gladly blame them, but it isn't. It is a DAZ installer. And they have a looooong record of sloppiness when it comes to installers (at least 5 year's worth). They are constantly rewriting it, but not fixing it. They have to fix their taxonomy first. "Character" is not the same as "Characters" or "character". Sloppy. I got tired of the endless searches for things they had misplaced. Unless you the customer tell them there is a problem, they won't know, and won't fix it. And blaming the wrong company won't fix it at all. Carolly

Poser does have a recursive search function...but it does not look for .obj files in the texture folder, or cr2's in the main runtime. Poser's library system was =never= designed to handle the multi-gigabyte monstrosities many of us have for runtimes, and it -was- designed with an assumption that whoever created new content could (a)spell, and (b) knew the rules of filenaming. Circumstances that even DAZ trips over, never mind some other 3rd party providers... Wait till you get some nifty freebie, install it, and find out the provider just zipped it out of his directory tree...and some searching leads you to C:Program FilesMetacreationsPoserRuntimewhatever. The safest thing to do is create a dummy folder to install any new content into, then manually move it into the Poser runtime. It adds a few minutes to the install, but it saves a =LOT= of headache.

File handling is one of those things where Poser has a few little problems. There is, for instance, the updating problem in the Materials room and, while SR4 seemed to fix it, a problem with Poser understanding file locations which Poser had saved. Also, Poser is fundamentally pretty old. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets confused by file-system features in current versions of Windows. Looking at my own Runtime, I think there's a lot of scope for a user to rearrange thinsg to make stuff easier to find. Everyone seems to use a wide-and-shallow structure, and way the Poser library interface works the list of folders can soon get awkwardly long. It's way too late to do anything about P6. And DAZ have been through several generations of their installer. I'll live with their choices for recent products, because there is an uninstaller.

Dale & Antonia

Thank you for the historical education. I like the idea of installing things in a dummy file and then putting it in it's "proper" place.

I would really like to change the content organization, but I'm just too much of a light weight at the moment. However, I have backed-up my content files, and maybe when my temperment and knowledge can handle it, I'll try what I feel is a more logical structure.

I downloaded the Hogsoft CL demo. According to CL there were about 6000+ files and around 3500+ had erronious links of some kind.

If CL knows what it is talking about, that is amazing. I didn't do anything to the content but standard unzip and/or install. My Poser re-installation, is only about a week old and CL thinks it looks like the U.S. Library of Congress on a bad day. :-)

Again, thank you for the helpful comments.

Jim

The Library of Congress System is quite logical compared to the Dewey Decimal System. However, if the catalog entry is mistyped, neither system will find the desired book. Garbage in, garbage out. I was a reference librarian for 4 years (worked my way through university, experienced in both systems) and thus have far too much knowledge about how to organize for retrieval... and too little tolerance for folder structures. Carolly

There are times when I would love to have the features of a Unix-style filesystem, so that I could have several distinct filesystem entries pointing to the same data. Though that can lead to problems when I'm deleting data...

Jim; Isn't Correct Reference a nifty little utility? Just be very careful about letting it fix things on its own; it can be confused by multiple iterations of the same error, and then you will -really- have a time undoing it. Most of the errors will be things like 'file' instead of 'File'; simple spelling and capitalization errors lead the pack here. We won't get into a segment of the community's penchant for cobbling together a folder structure that's more ego boo than sensible. Oh, and throw in the fact that Poser is not only coded to be cross platform, but that it was originally a Mac application that was ported to Win 3.1. Draw your own conclusions about the code hoops they had to jump through to pull that one off..... ;P

Dale-

Maybe I should revise my position. After all the history that has unfolded, maybe I should say it is a miracle it works at all. :-)

CL is an amazing tool. I only downloaded the demo. I originally bought Poser5 at deadend prices so I could sort of learn it while waiting for Poser6.

I'm going to also wait until Poser6 is installed and then I'm going to add the full CL and tackle the Directories one category at a time.

Using a backup, I think/hope I could get myself out of trouble fairly quickly if CL goes on a rampage.

I'm really glad you people tipped me off to that tool. It looks like a necessary item to me.

Do you have any experience with that Poser file interface PBoost, which is also at the www.hogsoft.com?

It is hard to tell from the advert, but it looks as if your files could be a bit screwed up, and you could leave them that way and use the $28.00 U.S. PBoost as an interface to organize it forever.

Jim

Bingo. I use P Booost with P5 (and hopefully P6; Hogwarden is good about supporting his products) all the time. Some will say that being able to use external runtimes in P5 makes it superfluous, but it is a handy tool to redefine your libary system as you see fit. Well, as an example: With P-Booost I've added a few layers to my Pose folder. I have one that is nothing but the INJ-REM poses that the morph injection enabled models use; as long as the !FolderName ( like '!DAZ') is in the runtime where the actual P5 executable lives, the pose files can go just about anywhere (and getting all those bloody inj files out of the default pose directory cut it almost in half). There's a folder strictly for the adult oriented poses (not only body poses, but set ups, specialty morph injections, etc), one for esoterica, which is a catch all, science fiction based poses, architectural poses, MAT poses, vehicle poses. etc. Now you can do this to some extent without P-Booost; but by using it, you can create the new categories in the main P-Booost window, and drag and drop content out of the existing locations and place them where you want them. Another neat trick I stumbled over with P5 is to create a null runtime; just an empty folder with nothing in it-- and link it into P5. When P5 starts up, it only reads the selected runtime, so if you switch to the null runtime, Poser will start a =lot= faster....like around 20 seconds on my Athlon 64-3000. Then you change to the runtime that has stuff in it, but Poser won't read a library until you open it for the first time. That part is slow....but you aren't trying to read all the libraries at the same time the program is trying to initialize. This trick also works with P-Booost; just create an empty folder in each library, select them before you start P5, and you get the same effect.

Dale-

Your a prince. That's a great explanation of P-Booost.
That sounds like a piece of software an almost, practically, beginning, amateur, novice could master and make good use of. :-)

As far as it running on Poser6, I'm getting the sinking feeling that P6 will have a really nice new opening Logo, and then slip downhill to very nearly P5. :-)

Is that null runtime folder created the way you add new folders to you Poser content Window Folders?

Jim

All you have to do is create a folder in Windows Explorer and name it what you want. Fire up P5, open the library panel, choose a category, and double click the up arrow folder at the top of the stack until you get to the panel that has a very short list of folders marked runtime, and a red dot next to one of them. Then just go down, and click the 'add runtime' mark at the bottom. You'll get a standard windows panel to locate your folder with.

Thanks Dale

I'm going to give that a try today.

A little further question, -Make the folder in Windows Explorer? I'm with you. :-)

But Where does the folder go?

Poser/Newfolder or Poser/Runtime/Newfolder or Poser/....?/.....?/Newfolder
or just anywhere-I-want/Newfolder?

Jim

Anywhere you want.