It's really not that big of a deal. With as many vendors as there are, the long-running methods aren't likely going to change much any time soon. Many of them likely don't even pay attention to the forums since that's not where the bulk of their customers are.

SSGBryan is correct that the idea that V4 requires pz2 files instead of mc6 files is a complete misconception. V3 would have required this, and even then it was only due to the non-existence of mc6 files through the majority of her reign. It's possible that the innitial release of V4 was listed as being Poser 5 compatible, and if so then .mc6 files wouldn't have worked because they didn't come about until Poser 6. But V4.2 and M4 both install with .mc6 files in the material room with their default textures. So really the only explanation for the continued use of .pz2 files for textures is due to old habbits. There is no real reason to use them now. 

Regardless, I'm beginning to regret having started this thread. I don't buy a lot of 3rd party content. I buy the figures I need to work on for my clients and utilities that make that work faster and easier. It's rare that I buy anything for my own use unless its something that I really like, or if I want to do some add-on work. So I'm really not familiar with the way a lot of vendors package their content. Seeing files that don't belong in various places based on how the library is structured bugs me. I have my own runtime that all my custom work goes in but it's structured exactly the same as the stock library. I've never bothered to customize the stock library. I shouldn't need to. 

As for naming conventions, the underscores and the run-on words is a common practice even in the pro CG world. Some software still requires it, and a lot of studios run on custom versions of Linux, they don't use Mac or Windows anything. I'm not sure if the naming conventions are a requirement of Linux or not (i don't use Linux). Maybe it's just one of those old habbits that have never died, like .pz2 files instead of .mc6 files. When I name my files, I always capitalize the first letter of each word accept for the first (usually). It makes it easy to read without spaces. Sometimes spaces in a file name can corrupt the file depending on what program you're trying to open it in, so there is that too. 

Ego folders help to keep things organized as long as they don't have annoying symbols in front of their names that screws up the alphabetical order. And you can thank DAZ for starting the !!EgoFolderTrend. I guess they did that so that all their figures stayed at the top of the figure list to make it easier for people to find, but it didn't take long for other vendors to figure it out and start out-doing them with the same approach. 

 

~Shane