I actually have no visiblity into the C++ code - Poser itself. I only work on the library gui in Flex.

So I only know what the guys at SM tell me. They won't show me the code. grin I've offered to add true SSS and a bunch of new nodes to the renderer but they didn't take me up on it.

So - whatever the issue is with porting to Cocoa, I don't really have much to do with it.

I guess besides Bagginsbill I'm the only human, er cat, on the planet that likes the new interface? The library takes ten minutes to start*, time to brew a coffee, but afterwards is very fast when you change folders. The old library took fifteen to thirty seconds every time you changed folders. The new docking window interface eats less of your screen real estate than the old one.

I'm very impressed by the Poser Pro 2010 Beta. So far I've encountered no bugs that are not in Poser Pro or in Poser 8.

*Poser 7 legacy, plus DAZ V4/M4. Everything in one runtime. My Characters folder has over 1000 sub-folders!

I definitely like it far better in principle. My biggest problem has been some sort of stability issues where it gets hung up trying to do a refresh.

Make that 2... erm... cats that like it. I gotta say BB, you've been doing a great job on the new library design. The screen shot for Pro2010 looks even better!  Thanks for doing all the hard work!

I never tried adding stuff to the runtime while Poser was running so I never tried a refresh.

I always thought that Smith Micro was like Corel, where old software goes to die. I even started referring to it as Sith Micro. In my opinion they have proven me wrong and I'm glad.

Quote - I definitely like it far better in principle. My biggest problem has been some sort of stability issues where it gets hung up trying to do a refresh.

Ahhh, me too... don't you hate that? The funny thing is, the library (on P8) ran great up until about a week after I installed SR2.1. I've tried a bunch of different suggestions (excluding reinstalling P8) and it's gradually getting worse :p  

I've had this problem from the beginning. And no, MyCat - not just when adding content with Poser open.

Why are you refreshing if the data hasn't changed out from under Poser?

No choice if Poser is just showing a bunch of question marks instead of the content.

Question mark could mean that it just hasn't gotten to scanning that yet. Asking it to refresh is the same as asking it to scan something again. But if it has so much work to do that scanning it is going to happen in the future, re-scanning will also happen in the future.

Or it could mean that it broke - failed to read the files in a folder.

We should be looking at the logs to find out.

I sometimes get the question but it's usually enough for me to give Poser time to sort it out.  I haven't had any real problems since SR2

Quote - I sometimes get the question but it's usually enough for me to give Poser time to sort it out.  I haven't had any real problems since SR2

Same for Me..

Put it this way: should I be getting those question marks if I open Poser and I want to use the same library I was using when I closed it? And if I haven't added new content, how long should I expect to wait for my regular folders to be scanned? 'Cause what happens intermittently (not all the time) is that it just seems to forget what was there.

To put it another way: it sits there with question marks on a folder far longer than it would take to open the same folder in the old Poser Pro before the new library. I'm sure that's not right.

The old Poser Pro library only showed one folder at a time. Each time you switched folders, it would work on scanning it, which caused a delay.

The Poser 8 library scans every top-level folder you have, plus every folder you had open before you closed Poser last time. This means that if you open a lot of branches and leave them open, it will take a long time to re-build all the data from all those branches. Leave 100 branches open, and you experience the initial startup cost of visiting 100 folders in Poser 7. Except you don't actually have to wait to do anything. But you will have to wait the same amount of time as it ever took to open 100 folders.

But I very rarely leave more than a couple of folders open. Too hard to see what's in the library at a glance.

I doubt many of you here know me.  Though I have been around a while, doing the usual hobbyist consumer thing here at Renderosity, DAZ3D and RDNA primarily.  I've been active in the DAZ Forums for a while now.  And in alt.binaries.3d.poser longer.

@ bagginsbill - I want to first say Thank you!  very much for the huge contributions you've made to the entire Poserdom community.  Your name and scripts come up a lot in many discussions at several places I frequent.  I see a lot of useful knowledge shared freely, and I do appreciate all of it.

Poser 8.  I DID buy it as an upgrade to Poser Pro.  I did use it for two weeks.  I used it without any 3rd party Library plugins or utilities.  I used it stock.  And I found it unusable as sold.  I asked for and recieved a refund for Poser 8.  I don't regret trying it, nor regret asking for a refund.  For me, its content manager was completely unusable. 
I do use Poser Pro, and I like its interface, but especially the Library Palette.  My main runtime I use is about 300 gigs now.  The way I have organized it is simple and easy for me to use.  Expanding it is, unfortunately, too easy as well.  I won't be able to simply break it up.  I'll have to create a number of new runtimes in order to do that.   Huge undertaking, reinstalling all that content.
I use a 24" widescreen LCD monitor (Samsung 245T) for my main work, and a 19" LCD monitor (Samsung 930B) for my "catchall".  All my main "color work" is done on the 24".  Poser Pros Library Palette is doing just fine using the 19".
The main difference between the new content manager and Library Palette was that the content manager showed only one item per line.  Well, that one thing is what slowed me down, made life with Poser far more difficult, and ultimately unacceptable.   See attached image of my Poser Pro desktop as it is running right now.  One UI Dot click changes the interface to any of my choices.  I like that the Dots have NOT disappeared from the UI!
I also don't like that Poser 8 required full installation and enabling of Flash, nor that it required Internet Explorer 8.   I believe that is a bad choice, and proven by a number of difficulties experienced by P8 users and some of the issues touched on in this thread even.  I realize this isn't going to go away, I just hope you've worked the snags out of it by release time.
Poser 8 GUI.  I didn't like that either, with all the framed windows.  Unweildy at the very best.
With all this still in my mind, an a.b.3d.p regular give us a heads up on this thread.   I've read the thread, and I'm now convinced that Poser Pro 2010 may well prove to be a worthy successor to Poser Pro.   Poser 8 still has no place on my system.  But PP2010 could.

I like what you showed in this thread of the new content manager you're working on.    Note that I still despise Flash because of its abuse in web pages and web browsers.  I understand it is a tool to be used, and hope you do not enable any web access 'back doors' through it.  One thing I will require is the ability to seal it off from any access to the internet.  I won't even need for it to access my LAN.  I pray you will make this an option in preferences.  Having multiple items in rank and file is a hugely major improvement.   The one item per line ruined it for me.
One other little thing I want to ask about.   Poser in creating its thumbnails simply does a quickie render.  And use of transmaps makes things like clothing, hair, horse bodies, etc. disappear.  Not so good when others are around.  They think the items are just nudes.  Can this be fixed, or is it already fixed? 
I also like what you've said about being able to make the interface resemble that of Poser Pros.  So we can lose the window frames then?
One further new item you discuss that fairly clinches my trying Poser Pro 2010 is full native 64 bit executable.  Not just the FireFly renderer.  The main program.  That has been a long time coming, and it is much needed.

Thanks for all the information bagginsbill, and for all you do for the community!

McG.

Merci Bagginsbill for your comments
I am using Win 7 64 bits and i will use this next 64 bits version of Poser
Hope Hope and hope the libraies will be better than vesion 8 (i use with pleasure exclusively Xl extended library script with Poser now) 

Overall I think the improvements in Poser 8 outweigh my personal dislike for the Poser 8 library. And from what I can tell from the PoserPro 2010 Beta, PoserPro 2010 will be an even more  significant advance. That said, for regular work I still user Poser Pro (not the 2010 beta). Why? Because there is a bug in both Poser 8 and the PoserPro 2010 Beta that causes the application to crash 95% of the time whenever I open an existing scene file from the File->Open menu item. It doesn't crash if I open the very same .pz3 files and select "Open with..." in Windows. I submitted a bug report for Poser 8 about this when it first came out, but I got so tired of the response being "It will be fixed in the next Service Release" that I just gave up. (I also submitted a bug report on the PoserPro 2010 beta.)

 I know it's a bug in Poser because I used a few different  Microsoft developer tools to actually track down where/when the error was occurring (which is a little difficult when you don't have source code -- it would be nice if they built in a debug mode that would allow users to actually create some log files that might be of use to the developers, but I digress). Both applications follow different paths through the code depending on whether you use File->Open or "Open with...". If you want to see it yourself just get Process Monitor from Microsoft. The point of all this is that all the UI changes are very nice, but it would be nicer still if a little more time was spent on improving the stability of the code. By the way, one of the rules we use at my company when we develop software is that anytime an application crashes, by definition, there is a bug in the program. It may be that you can't fix it because of limitations in the OS or third party tools, but it is a bug in the program none-the-less.
 

Quote - I actually have no visiblity into the C++ code - Poser itself. I only work on the library gui in Flex.

So I only know what the guys at SM tell me. They won't show me the code. grin I've offered to add true SSS and a bunch of new nodes to the renderer but they didn't take me up on it.

So - whatever the issue is with porting to Cocoa, I don't really have much to do with it.

Imagining conversation: "Hey, isn't that the guy from the forums who actually understands lighting and shader math?  He makes insane shader noodles in his sleep and seems to understand Poser's renderer better than anyone.  We should hire him to overhaul Poser's GUI!" 

Quote -
Imagining conversation: "Hey, isn't that the guy from the forums who actually understands lighting and shader math?  He makes insane shader noodles in his sleep and seems to understand Poser's renderer better than anyone.  We should hire him to overhaul Poser's GUI!" 

Heh. No, they know who "Bagginsbill" is a lot better than that. :)

My apologies to BagginsBill.

I overreacted and was rude. Thanks for taking the time to explain yourself.

Thanks Coleman. No worries.

Quote - I need to clarify that the Mac will not get the 64-bit editor, only Windows gets the 64-bit editor. There are insurmountable difficulties with a 64-bit GUI on Mac. That's why Photoshop is still a 32-bit app on Mac.

Both will have a 64-bit renderer.

So, for mac users, what does it mean we won't get a 64-bit editor? I hope it doesn't mean we're stuck with the 4gig limit when loading content into poser.

Your limits will be whatever limits Mac users endure for 32 bit, I'm sure.

Quote - So, for mac users, what does it mean we won't get a 64-bit editor? I hope it doesn't mean we're stuck with the 4gig limit when loading content into poser.

That's what it means. For now. I don't know SM's plan, but my understanding is that making the editor (the "rooms") be 64-bit is a lot more work and they want to release Pro 2010 long before that work will be possible to complete.

Hey bagginsbill, I am wondering if you could possibly look into adjusting the library in Poser Pro 2010 to be a bit more like the Poser 7 library in one regard. The triangle quick auto fill navigation doesn't work very well in Poser 8 since the sub categories expand right on top of the primary categories and that makes it so it is REALLY difficult to navigate using that. Sorry to segway away from the original topic but I saw the navigation issue mentioned here.

That is one of the few true limitations of Flex/Flash that I've not found a way around, so far. It refuses to make true popup menus - they're constrained to show inside the library window.

I always thought that flyout heirarchy menus would become largely pointless once the persistent trees were available.

Ugh, not a good sign. Thanks for the info. It looks like i might need to get Poser Pro soon.