Beta 129 - Global Category and Tag Domain Protection

[Joe]

This thread relates specifically to a feature being introduced in the Beta 129 release, which will likely be available by the time you finish reading this post, or shortly thereafter.

We are introducing a feature that protects Global Categories and Tag Domains from changes that man inadvertently cause content you share or import to appear incorrect. We aren’t removing any capabilities you currently have, but we are putting an extra step into the process to insure that users know what they are getting themselves into before committing. There are some additional caveats for users who have already modified the global categories and tags before this feature made it in, so read on for further details.

First, you’ll notice that Categories and Tag Domains now have an icon indicating whether they are Global (meaning standard for all Realm Works users) or local (meaning that you’ve custom created them for your realm). This will make them visually easier to tell apart at a glance. Hovering your mouse over the icon will let you know which icon means what, but it should be fairly obvious. Second, you’ll notice that almost all fields are disabled for Global Categories and their structure, as well as Global Tag Domains and their tags. We aren’t taking away the ability to edit these, just putting an extra safety step in the process.

If you hover over a disabled field with your mouse, you’ll see a message indicating why you’re currently unable to edit that field. It instructs you to look for a command called “Remove Protection from Global Category” (or “Remove Protection from Global Tag Domain”) in the respective tools menus for each. Choosing that command will prompt you with a summarized explanation of the potential side effects of editing Global Categories and Global Tag Domains. It also currently points you here to this forum post, though we will be instituting a more formal and permanent documentation method before the 1.0 release. You can confirm or cancel at this point, and must save for the change to take effect.

For reference, the text of each dialog is as follows:

Categories - “Removing protection from a global category allows you to edit certain aspects of it. However, you should be cautious about the changes you make. Changing the meaning of a Global Category or a Section Definition within it may cause content you import from outside sources and content you share with others to appear incorrectly categorized.

An example of a change to avoid is renaming Location to Ice Cream Flavor. Any Ice Cream Flavors you create and share will be imported by other users into their Location category, and any Location content you acquire from others will be imported into your Ice Cream Flavors category. A better way to accomplish this would be to create a separate custom category for Ice Cream Flavors.

An example of a relatively safe change to make is renaming Location to Place. In this case, most content you import or share would fit well under either name. If you don’t want to use a category, it is better to hide it (by unchecking “shown”) and create a new custom category rather than repurposing a global category.

For more information on what is safe and what is not, please see the Realm Works Early Access Discussion forum at http://forums.wolflair.com/ in the thread titled “Beta 129 - Global Category and Tag Domain Protection”.

Once protection has been removed, it cannot be reestablished. Are you sure you want to remove protection?”


Tag Domains – “Removing protection from a global tag domain allows you to edit certain aspects of it. However, you should be cautious about the changes you make. Changing the meaning of a Global Tag Domain or a Tag within it may cause content you import from outside sources and content you share with others to appear incorrect.

An example of a change to avoid is renaming Gender to Ice Cream Flavor, and Male and Female to Chocolate and Vanilla. Any topics you create using these tags will appear as Genders to those you share them with, and any topics you import using the global Gender tags (such as NPCs) will appear with Ice Cream Flavors. A better way to accomplish this would be to create a separate custom tag domain for Ice Cream Flavors.

An example of a relatively safe change to make is renaming Race to Species. In this case, most content you import or share would fit well under either name. If you don’t want to use a tag or tag domain, it is better to hide it (by unchecking “shown”) and create a new custom tag or tag domain rather than repurposing a global tag or tag domain.

For more information on what is safe and what is not, please see the Realm Works Early Access Discussion forum at http://forums.wolflair.com/ in the thread titled “Beta 129 - Global Category and Tag Domain Protection”.

Once protection has been removed, it cannot be reestablished. Are you sure you want to remove protection?”

This is a somewhat complex issue, and the warning message is just the tip of the iceberg. The main focus is on sharing and importing cloud content. Even if you don’t (currently) plan on using these cloud features, changes you make to global structure (Global Categories and Tag domains) now will affect your ability to use them in the future should you change your mind later on.

Generally speaking, Realm Works prevents you from doing catastrophic things to the global structure in your realms. You can’t, for instance, delete the Location category, which would cause problems if you ever tried to import content which depended on Locations existing as a category. Instead, you should uncheck “shown” for Location. That way, if you change your mind later, you can always reactivate it. Similarly, you can’t delete section definitions from global categories, or global tag domains, etc. Again, uncheck “shown” to get them out of your way.

Editing global structure is another story however. This is a gray area, where there are some things we definitely want to support, and some things that you really shouldn’t do in certain circumstances, but there’s no way we can separate them because Realm Works can’t determine your intent. As a general rule, we don’t want to support changing the meaning of global structure because that gets you in trouble when integrating with other content. Let’s go to some examples:

Example 1: Renaming Tags
While we want to get even better support for translation later on, in the meanwhile we think it’s appropriate for users to translate structural elements into their own language if they choose, such as translating category names or tags from their current English into German, Spanish, etc. If a Spanish speaking user renames the “Male” tag to “Masculino” A Male NPC will retain the correct tag regardless of who shared or imported him, but he may appear as “Male” for one user and “Masculino” for another. That’s fine. Different representation, same meaning. (And please forgive any mistranslation here. I’m solely relying on internet translators for this, and you know how that goes…)

Let’s say your campaign has a 3rd gender. What you should NOT do is rename “Male” to “Gender 3” and then create your own custom “Male” tag. Your 3 tags may appear correct to you at this point (“Male, Female, Gender 3”) but if you ever imported a Male NPC created by someone else, they would appear in your realm as having Gender 3. Furthermore, if you ever tried to share an NPC you create using your custom “Male” tag, it would be imported into that user’s realm not under the standard “Male” tag, but in customized duplicate “Male” tag with the same name, which will mess up that user’s filtering and generally make their life miserable.

What you’ve done here is change the meaning of the tag, repurposing it for something else, and then assumed that recreating a tag with the same name would fix everything. Note however that we aren’t preventing you from doing this. We are just warning you that if you do so, you may have issues sharing or importing content in the future. What you should do is add as a custom 3rd tag, leaving the originals untouched. You won’t even need to turn off protection to do so.

Example 2: Renaming Sections
As a quick example, let’s say you think “Overview” isn’t a good section name, and like “Summary” better. That’s fine. You aren’t really changing the meaning there.

Let’s say that your campaign centers around a court intrigue, and most of your NPC’s have some terrible secrets and blackmail opportunities. While you might consider putting these in the existing section structure for Individuals, it may be important (and lengthy) enough to put in their own section definition, maybe called “Closet Skeletons”. That’s fine. What you should NOT do is repurpose the “Posessions” section definition by renaming it to “Closet Skeletons”. As you might expect, if you import NPC’s, their “Closet Skeletons” section might just list what they’ve got in their pocketses. Similarly, if you share your NPC’s with others, they might be surprised to see the scandals your characters are embroiled in when they were just looking for their gear. The important thing to remember is that they will still see “Posessions” even though you have “Closet Skeletons”.

A better route to take is to simply add a custom section to your NPC and label it how you like, or to add a custom Section Definition to the Individual Category and choose a name that you like, leaving the existing section definitions intact. If you find that you aren’t using one, simply turn it off using the “shown” checkbox. That way, if you even import an NPC that does use it, you can easily turn it back on.