Quote - I can't think of any reason why they might want to add [RSR] back in.

The reason would be that I'd guess that close to half the content developed over the history of Poser's life doesn't have PNG thumbnails. DAZ originals before 2007 didn't routinely have PNGs and that's late V3/M3/A3 timeframes (V4 came out in late 2006). That's a lot of very usable content that most Poser users have and can still purchase.

I think the only reason more people haven't been annoyed about this is that they've been carrying forward their runtimes across the different versions of Poser and computer changes and any RSR thumbs were already converted in earlier versions.  Once they get a major hard drive crash, they're not going to be too thrilled with having to run another program after reinstalling all their content simply to be able to see the thumbnails.

Not being fully backwards compatible is a poor programming practice. It would be akin to Microsoft not making all documents produced prior to Office 2007 fully readable with all formatting in newer versions of Office. Microsoft has a history of making bad arrogant decisions about the usability of their software and they haven't been that dumb.

Quote - No one expects Ford to support the T-Model until today, am I right?

True, but nobody is going to routinely drive a T-Model today. The 3rd generation Millennium figures are still widely used and, unless DAZ has updated the files with PNGs, they don't have them. I haven't installed P8 yet, but I wouldn't be bothered if they dropped Detailer Texture import. I haven't found any Poser content that needed it in all the time I've used the program. There are thousands of Poser files that do not have any PNG thumbnails.

I don't mind the loss of a function that's not useful today. I am annoyed at the loss of one that now forces me to do additional manual effort to install content that's only a few years old. That's sloppy programming that isn't a good sign of a company that's standing by their users. As is, I'll have to cross my fingers that the new library interface will work cleanly with my antivirus programs without my having to contact their technical support.

I wonder if DAZ Studio processes RSR thumbnails inside the program. If they do a better job of being compatible with Poser than Poser is, P8 may be the last version I purchase.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon