What does ! in front of a pose file mean?

That is how insecure merchants try to keep there products at the top of your runtime. I think it was Daz that started it. Now you get !!!!!! a lot.

It will not stop until the store tells the merchants that it will not be put up for sale until the ! and other forms do do that, are not included. Like that's going to happen.

It means that the creator of this pose wants to see his product as the first in the list. Because it is surely the most important file in the world!

:)

The reasons I never do this are because I don't want to annoy my customers and I credit them with enough sense to read the Readme or examine the zip file to see what goes where.

Well, thanks! (sorry). The answer is a true surprise.

Quote - I think it was Daz that started it. Now you get !!!!!! a lot.

Actually, Daz named their morph folder (the folder that contains the morphs the INJ & REM's point to) with exclamation marks in front of it, not the pose folder. In Poser itself you don't see the morph folder.

I use exclamation marks 'inside' my folders if I feel something should be seen first 'inside' that folder. For example, if a morph needs to be loaded before a texture, etc.

Quote - That is how insecure merchants try to keep there products at the top of your runtime. I think it was Daz that started it. Now you get !!!!!! a lot.

It will not stop until the store tells the merchants that it will not be put up for sale until the ! and other forms do do that, are not included. Like that's going to happen.

Why? The stores have all sorts of strictures, some a little arbitrary... why not this do you think?

I also think the product names should include the figure they are for and that the product names should be indentical in the the Geometry folder, Textures folder and Library folders.

That's just me :)

I have used this technique to my advantage to sort my Runtime Folders. I like my Figures at the Top so they all get 3 (!!!), I like by Figure MATs to be at the top so the Folder I placed them in gets named !!! Figure MATs or !!! Figure MAT/MOR .

This all requires extreme customization of your Runtimes, but I find the effort worth the results.

I will add that I tend to strip off all other uses of ! in products, because I am looking for a name, not a ! .

Quote - That is how insecure merchants try to keep there products at the top of your runtime. I think it was Daz that started it. Now you get !!!!!! a lot.

It will not stop until the store tells the merchants that it will not be put up for sale until the ! and other forms do do that, are not included. Like that's going to happen.

A merchant started this craze here at Rendo years ago to get her folder listed above/in front of my "Anton" folders. It caught on.

I don't like it either:) hehe So is it my fault? lol

i take great pleasure in renaming any and all such idiocies, and i remember the merchants, and not in a good way. one of these days i'm gonna fire off a complaint letter to all of them with a lot of shakespearean swear words (with the exception of people like xena, who actually make use of sort order for useful reasons).

You can also use % & + - . to make the file name earlier in the list, they are just the characters in  the ascii order.

I havent tried it but if you put a space at the start of the name it should appear in the list before the !

Thanks xantor for giving these merchants more ammo.

DAZ may not have started it, but they certainly took it to extremes... This is the top of my Pose library. :cursing: It's a good job I never use my library palette, isn't it? :biggrin: xantor: you're right in saying that space comes before anything else in the printable ASCII character set, but fortunately for us, you can't start a file name with a space (in Windows, at least). The exclamation mark is the first character that can be used to start a file name, so it has the most get-me-to-the-top power.

Uhm.. you CAN start a filename with a Space. I use it to sort my own stuff (also commercial, but not on a folder level though. I just like to have the main thing on top - say a MOR pose, and then the MAT poses below that)

Just name the thing in Poser starting with a space. Or use something like Windows Commander (Now called Total Commander) - that accepts filenames starting with a blank as well

personally I use zzz for the prefix of my private folders. The end is just as convenient as the begining.

EnglishBob sez quote: It's a good job I never use my library palette, isn't it?

How is that?

In brief: PRPC in conjunction with P3dO - Advanced Library for Poser is a similar utility. Both require a Python-enabled version of Poser, i.e. Pro Pack onwards.

Despite plentiful kind help of the authors I could not get those two to work on my system well. Lately I read a suggestion that it might be a peculiarity of my firewall. I have been using Ockham's FreeLoader.py and he is working on the loading from icon... right now it loads from file name and it loads REALLY fast!

:biggrin:

Quote - personally I use zzz for the prefix of my private folders. The end is just as convenient as the begining.

UNLESS you're still on Poser 4 / Pro Pack, and has a folder that is so large that anything after G is.. just gone.

Been there, done that.

Then I got PBooost and never looked back LOL!

In printing, the "!" character is also known as a "screamer" (among other more offensive terms).

When little kiddies are balancing themselves atop a thick wall or jumping on and off a 6-inch step, you will often hear them screaming "MUMMY!!!! MUMMY!!!! LOOK AT ME!!!!". (or words to that effect). The mother's response (after the 1st couple of times) tends to be "Yes Jimmy" (and later no response at all, except for perhaps "GET DOWN FROM THERE!")

PR guys and some merchants have got (just a little) past the "little kiddie" stage. So their  attention-grabbing technique is to scream 1st, then say "Look at me". OK, they got slightly computer-literate, but they're still jumping up and down 6-inch steps.

:biggrin:

Cheers,
Diolma

Oh and PBooost II can do that "load from library" as well. And it works like a dream. I still use my usual palettes for the main stuff but everything else is loaded via PBooost

Quote - PR guys and some merchants have got (just a little) past the "little kiddie" stage. So their  attention-grabbing technique is to scream 1st, then say "Look at me". OK, they got slightly computer-literate, but they're still jumping up and down 6-inch steps.

:biggrin:

Cheers,
Diolma

I can understand the reasoning behind the "plings" in library folders, even if they are irritating and counter-productive. But putting them in your geometry and texture folders? What possible purpose could that serve, except to say "Hey, I'm stupid, don't buy any more of my stuff!!!" I have six plinged sub-folders in my texture folder, and one in my geometries. What the?

Another fun thing when organising your runtimes is when you buy an item called, say, MartianQueen, and then the folders are named "Exana" or something like that. NO more reference to MartianQueen anywhere.

"I can understand the reasoning behind the "plings" in library folders, even if they are irritating and counter-productive. But putting them in your geometry and texture folders? What possible purpose could that serve, except to say "Hey, I'm stupid, don't buy any more of my stuff!!!" I have six plinged sub-folders in my texture folder, and one in my geometries"

I did say "slightly computer literate" :-))

Cheers,
Diolma

Whlie we're  on the topic (or kinda). Can I reorganise my library palettes (characters, props & pose) just by dumping the sub-folders into a folder of my choise, eg. can I put all my Hair Mat folders into a master folder called Hair Mats. Likewise, can I put all my Clothing Characters for Mike into a folder called Mike's clothes. My palettes are getting very long and untidy and I'd like to tidy them up.

Quote - Whlie we're  on the topic (or kinda). Can I reorganise my library palettes (characters, props & pose) just by dumping the sub-folders into a folder of my choise, eg. can I put all my Hair Mat folders into a master folder called Hair Mats. Likewise, can I put all my Clothing Characters for Mike into a folder called Mike's clothes. My palettes are getting very long and untidy and I'd like to tidy them up.

Yes, if you have Poser 5 or Poser 6. No, if you have an earlier version.  You can, however, buy PBooost (note the 3 'o's in the name), which will allow you to do more or less the same thing.  I used PBooost for quite a while before I bought Poser 5.

Thanks SamTherapy. Love your avatar. Mine will grow older as I learn more. At the moment I'm a very immature Poser user.

Quote - Thanks SamTherapy. Love your avatar. Mine will grow older as I learn more. At the moment I'm a very immature Poser user.

You're welcome. Thanks for the compliment, too. The avatar is a cut from a pic in my gallery:

http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=503625&Start=109&Artist=SamTherapy&ByArtist=Yes

well I do try to match my texture names to the clothing item name ... but sometimes I ahve to truncate things. However I'm careful to avoid "black.jpg" and suchlike because poser can be uber stupid and will latch onto just the wrong file ....

as far as !!!! they can !!!! shove it .... I find them annoying to no bloody end. I just prefix with my initials if at all.   PW stuff just gets PW folder prefix .

sometimes Brokerages (ppros, DAZ etc) change product names at the last minute. Or the artist builds it as say "interior number 3" and it isnt named properly til late in the game. it can be difficult if not impossible to rename things once built .. so I tend to cut some slack for that sort of thing. 

Heck ..as far as my texture expansions go I finally gave up names for them and just call them "texture expansion for whatever"  after 20 or so you run out of names.

so Anton its all YOUR fault poke poke  you !!!!   heh

I use an _ to bump up my working folders to the top of the mess

:)

Could it not be Marketplace policy not to allow products with !!names?

Actually as a new merchant I use the ! in front of my products runtime folders so they "float" to the top of the folder structure, making them easier to find and work with.
I dont always remove them because it can become a pain at the end of the packaging process.

As mentioned above I apply all sorts of markers to my runtime structure to again float favourite folders to the top of the file sturcture.
I would imagine most competent users would do this?...

I thought one of the cooler features of poser was the ability to rname and remake folder structures to assist in navigating through the mind numbing array of folders... 

Most competent users don`t have to do that.

Quote - Actually as a new merchant I use the ! in front of my products runtime folders so they "float" to the top of the folder structure, making them easier to find and work with.

1. Why should I want to find YOUR products any easier than some other merchant's products?

2. When all merchants adopt this policy, it becomes inflationary. Using one ! is no longer enough to float to the top. !! won't be sure of getting you there any more. Now we see !!! and !!!! as merchants crazily try to beat each other to the top.

It's a total nonsense, and it will only be stopped when the RMP bans products that perpetuate this abuse.

" making them easier to find and work with."

I'm no content provider so pardon me if this is wrong,but wouldn't Posers' ability to have multiple runtimes solve this?

I mean...why  not create a runtime for each working project? It seems to me that it would be a simple way of keeping the current working project separate from everything else and make it easier to package as well.

Tom

"I'm no content provider so pardon me if this is wrong,but wouldn't Posers' ability to have multiple runtimes solve this?"

That would be to easy and make to much sence. We all know that !!!! is the better way to go. Though the merchant might still be stuck in P4 and not able to do the runtime thingy.

I would suggest to quit buying products from merchants that do that. Unfortunately some of the top merchant find the need to do this. The buying wont stop and the RMP won't make them stop using the cheep practice.

You can check if a merchant does this by cheking out the readme file on the product page.

To be honest, I'd rather the merchants folders either be all at the top or all at the bottom (would perfer if they were all at the bottom), instead of mixed up with my poser folders.  Without the exclamation point their folders would be all mixed up with poser's folders, then you would have to search through more folders to find the poser folder you are looking  for.  I find that annoying.  Guess I'm a bit on the lazy side.

They are still mixed up in a crazy way. If you wanted to find a folder relating to Anton, it would be useless to know that A is at the beginning of the alphabet. You would need to be able to remember if it was !Anton or !!Anton or !!!Anton to work out if it will be before or after !Zygote or !!Zygote.

But frankly, storing stuff in folders by merchant is a terrible way to do things. You are much better keeping all V3 dresses in one folder, all M3 shoes/boots in another, and so on. It's more work at first, but saves time in the long run.

Quote - Uhm.. you CAN start a filename with a Space. I use it to sort my own stuff (also commercial, but not on a folder level though. I just like to have the main thing on top - say a MOR pose, and then the MAT poses below that)

Just name the thing in Poser starting with a space. Or use something like Windows Commander (Now called Total Commander) - that accepts filenames starting with a blank as well

At least the space isn't as annoying to look at.
And yes, we have a few things that start with a space. Not because of self-importance, but because it's really annoying to have to scroll past three feet of DAZ stuff in the Poses folder to get to our stuff.

Quote - But frankly, storing stuff in folders by merchant is a terrible way to do things. You are much better keeping all V3 dresses in one folder, all M3 shoes/boots in another, and so on. It's more work at first, but saves time in the long run.

XFX Stuff is generally done by product name, and we figure you can rename and move things as you see fit. We do.

Dodger himself specifically moves his clothing into Prop library folders by figure and renames all the CR2s to PP2s because, well, clothing just makes sense as a prop to him, not as a figure. A posable prop maybe, but still a prop.

However, things are not distributed this way because we'd be fielding no end of support messages asking where things are, no matter how clearly we express it in the READMEs. So we just go with the normal flow of things.

Everyone has their own sorting style, so we figure just let 'em use it. If you want to rename all of our Poses to be .cm2 files and stick 'em in cameras, more power to you!

As for the private folders, we go with !XFX. Again the 'at the top' thing (and it's not because !XFX comes after !DAZ at least) is not the issue, just the seperating it out to avoid clutter in the 'real' folders. Why the top rather than the bottom? Well, because it's usually the top, so those private libraries can all be in the same place, together. Further, the '!' in this case serves to point out that it's not a 'normal' folder to some extent. And honestly, unless you're a power user, you never look in the 'hidden' libraries anyway.

..and the naming conventions are why I don't credit more folks with their hard work..:| Everyone I can remember gets a plug, but the names help a bit..;) Some folders can be renamed in Poser 4, some can't. I'll have to figure out which one day..;)

The "Vanity Folder" thing is a tricky one. On one hand it's much easier to credit a merchant/freestuff provider if you know you picked the prop (or whatever) in the TrekkieGrrrl folder. On the other hand, that folder may be enourmous and there IS a good deal of sense in dividing stuff after what it is rather who made it.

Personally, I do both. My PBooost has divided my Runtime in folders according to content (V3 clothes, David Clothes, Scenery stuff and so on) and in THOSE runtimes/folders thigs are sorted like the original zips were doing it. So ion some folders there ARE a lot of ! and !!!! stuff. And yes, it's a PITA. But I've used the space thing myself, not on folder level but inside the folders, to keep things together. For instance the major texture for a character should come before eye colours or nailpolish, at least in my opinion, so that would typically be prefaced with a space.

Quote -
As for the private folders, we go with !XFX. Again the 'at the top' thing (and it's not because !XFX comes after !DAZ at least) is not the issue, just the seperating it out to avoid clutter in the 'real' folders. Why the top rather than the bottom? Well, because it's usually the top, so those private libraries can all be in the same place, together. Further, the '!' in this case serves to point out that it's not a 'normal' folder to some extent.

You're kidding no-one. What "real" folders? All folders are real. And if the default folders were somehow more important and needed to be kept together, all the more reason to have them at the top.

I think XFX3D are talking about folders like the !DAZ folder that resides OUTSIDE the ones visible from inside Poser. Folders that people are NOT supposed to move or rename if they want their injection morphs to work.

That has nothing to do with kidding anyone...

I mean, I don't believe the reasons they give. There is no good reason to want to move these folders to the top of the list. It's vanity.

Quote - I mean, I don't believe the reasons they give. There is no good reason to want to move these folders to the top of the list. It's vanity.

There used to be a valid reason with P4 and ProPack due to the limit on folders.
For anyone with even a moderate collection of stuff, ending up with more than 250+ folders was very easy.
Once the limit was exceeded, some folders just wouldn't show up (those that would be at the end of list).
Adding a pling or equivalent to bring freshly installed stuff to the top of the list meant that it would at least show up.

well.  on the subject of "real" folders- i'm thinking of it like this : right now i have a pose folder filled with folders of morphs, materials and then "real" pose files.  it's very annoying.  it would be better to have the injection/utility poses grouped together.  right now, it's true, this is my ! section. 

that said, i'd much prefer MOR Figure Name, MAT FigureName,   Figure Name.  my absolute dream would be MOR Figure Name, sub-folders for groupings like head, chest, etc, Figure Name, and have materials go in the (you guessed it) materials folder.  properly organized and subfoldered.  so Arien's MFD textures, for example, could go in Morphing Fantasy Dress > Femme Fatale  or even Morphing Fantasy Dress > Arien > Femme Fatale.

Quote - I mean, I don't believe the reasons they give. There is no good reason to want to move these folders to the top of the list. It's vanity.

While we're at it, I think we should all put on some BRIGHT FLOURESCENT CLOTHES and then hang out in an UNLIT CAVE so they can be the BRIGHTEST THINGS YOU CAN'T SEE IN TOTAL DARKNESS!

well in the Library folders ..sure !folders are more annoying than anything

but in Runtime folders it doesnt matter. DAZ started the INJ folders with ! and everyone has adopted that as a standard, which does make it easier to pick out what folders contain INJ delta info that shouldnt be moved

Phantast
perhaps you mistook which type of folders were being discussed? I suggest rereading, unless you really wanted to say that "marking certain folders as having INJ delta info in them" is mere vanity. Which is sure what it sounds like to me that you are saying and doesnt make much sense to me .. well unless you really dont understand Runtime structure all too well which is very common these days.

Lyrra