Really hoping new update fixes:

[kbs666]

Regarding the assertion that namespaces would be simple, my response is simply: Sure, it's not hard if you want something that works extremely well for a couple specific use cases and fails utterly for the way the myriad GMs actually WANT to use Realm Works.

Programmers don't usually realize - want to accept? - that they are given a very strict framework and forced to adapt everything they do to operate within that rigid framework. That's the EXACT OPPOSITE of the way end-users think. They want something that adapts to how THEY operate. Yes, even the programmers out there have wildly different approaches to GMing and creating their worlds, and most of them would balk at the notion of having to conform to a very specific - and different - way of doing everything just to have namespaces.

To a significant degree, we successfully adapt to the way different users operate within Realm Works, as the product works extremely well for a very diverse range of GM approaches. Achieving that, however, is FRICKIN' HARD. With some regularity, programmers comment that we should do things X way, because that would make things easier. Typically, it would make things easier for that user and the way they want to work, but it would be at the expense of large contingents of other users who think and work differently. Programmers also have a habit of saying that doing X should be easy, but they overlook this fundamental problem that it's only easy if we force all users to conform to a very specific way of using the product, which users aren't going to respond well to.

Believe me, hearing this stuff from programmers never ceases to frustrate the hell out of me.

?
Adding a field to the DB, a dropdown after the suffix and adding a bit of logic that all defaults to "global" constrains anyone who doesn't want to use it how?

Look, I like this product and use it a lot and am one of your biggest boosters but I am also not just a programmer with 25 years experience. I'm a project manager with more than a decade in this sort of thing. I'm used to making end users happy and know the difference between something that sounds easy and something that is easy. You may not want to make the change for other reasons, I know of several, further cluttering the UI and the difficulty of explaining the concept to users are two, but bashing an honest suggestion over an area that is going to keep coming up once the CM goes live seems like a poor plan.

 

[Exmortis]

Thought I would add:
When filling a dungeon, or complex, or structure with many location topics, I pre make a few dozen or so. So my level 1 of a dungeon has 9 LoC1 copies, then I move to pre make 9 LoC2 copies and so on (each just an empty topic). So you see 9 copies of each topic (I pre make anywhere from 9 to 36 depending on size, and often spread out over all levels ready for renaming). I do this because without fail many early rooms need to link to a room further on, or even a different level. So in the event of stairs in room 1 on level 1 to room 1 on level 2 (this will mean a link between rooms), I will move a premade topic to level 2 of the dungeon, open it up in a new tab, name it, give it a prefix and maybe even a suffix, and save it. close that tab, and then set the link from room 1 on level 1 to room 1 on level 2. This saves me a ton of going back and setting links, It is already done.

Added a screenie to outline this.

 

[kbs666]

Now I'm even more confused.

Why type all this?

Surely every module you do has a map with all the locations marked on it already right?

When I do something like this the first thing I do is get the map in RW and put pins into all the locations and create topics from there. I assume you're working from either the PDF or physical modules so that should be no problem. Once you do that you shouldn't need all of that "loc2 copy copy copy copy copy copy" stuff.

It seems like you're making more work for yourself, IMO. You create all the blank topics, then you have to rename them, then you have to go and add your pins to the map later assuming I understand your workflow.

 

[AEIOU]

@kbs666: I seem to work opposite from you. For me the map is always last thing I work on as it's the least essential. I've found it to be a lot faster to focus on specific tasks in series iteratively rather than trying to do it all at once for every topic. It takes me several passes but in the end it's more consistent and I'm not burned out half-way through anymore. I'm just one data point but I'm sure there are others that do it differently from both of us.

 

[Joe]

@exmortis

I am unable to reproduce your linking issue in the latest build, and it sounds like you're no longer experiencing it either. Is this correct?

Additionally, are you still experiencing the text selection behavior you described on page 1? I attempted a basic reproduction of that issue and it seems to work just fine for me. If you're still seeing this behavior, there must be more specific steps that I need to do. Perhaps I will need a copy of your database and you can point me to some problem data.

 

[Exmortis]

@exmortis

I am unable to reproduce your linking issue in the latest build, and it sounds like you're no longer experiencing it either. Is this correct?

Additionally, are you still experiencing the text selection behavior you described on page 1? I attempted a basic reproduction of that issue and it seems to work just fine for me. If you're still seeing this behavior, there must be more specific steps that I need to do. Perhaps I will need a copy of your database and you can point me to some problem data.

I provided my database, and it never happens in a previous worked on topic.

It happens after I have copied and pasted the text from another source (web, PDF, word etc.) into a new topic, then select text to apply formatting. If you were to take any of the topics in my database and select text to apply formatting I know it will work. But what I have happen is on a new topic, and it happens the first time I select and want to apply formatting, once it works, it never fails. But the 1 in 3 new topics will have the issue I defined.

I have gotten so used to it, I now know instantly when it will fail. and I simply use the undo, and select the text again. Rinse, repeat until it works. Then in that specific topic it always works.

The linking crash has now I believe gone away, I have handed about 20 new topics, all with a manual link or more and not a single crash.

 

[Joe]

@exmortis can you perhaps provide me with a problematic source then? I am attempting to paste in text from a pdf, then splitting it up into snippets and formatting it as you describe, and don't see any problems.

Which option are you using with the special paste? Unformatted text? Unformatted text as a single paragraph?

 

[Exmortis]

@kbs666:

My work flow does not include map pins.

Why? Good question.

My entire design for this was the idea that none, and I mean none, of these works would ever be used in their original form. I just want them initially in that form, so no mater what the future holds, I have a common base. It is original.

I play pathfinder and always in a realm of my design, I have not GM'd a canned world since I was in my 20s. So, knowing this, that I will play these in a custom game world (Daede or Telon) and not in 1st, 2nd, 3rd or beyond D&D, but Pathfinder. They will get reskinned.

On top of that they will not happen on the same world map as they come. I will adapt the adventure to my custom gamer work, ToEE will not happing in Greyhawk, it will be reskinned as the Fallen Temple of Vol Tuniel in the region of The Wardship of the Sleeping Moon, on the continent of Thestra (as an example).

So, since so much will change, it is best to leave that when I import the realm and skin it. many of the things I do are for linking in the future.

Like AEIOU I work from the individual locations out for my adventures. I work from the initial location out for my game worlds. I will pin the map when I reskin the adventure.

The other thing is organization for import. I want to import it all under one category main topic, not spread all over the categories. I work with RW much the same way you worked with the books in the past. This all came about when they made the massive change with views and took away the completely separate World Almanac and Story Almanac. It really caused me some serious grief, and it took many hours of work to unscrew the outcome. So when I decided to archive my favorite adventures into RW as a realm, I thought long and hard about how I (since it is designed for me to use) want to import and reskin for use in any world, any rule system I may be playing in the future.

You work the map to the locations, I work the locations to the map. Patato vs potato.

 

[Exmortis]

@exmortis can you perhaps provide me with a problematic source then? I am attempting to paste in text from a pdf, then splitting it up into snippets and formatting it as you describe, and don't see any problems.

Which option are you using with the special paste? Unformatted text? Unformatted text as a single paragraph?

Well the PDFs were all bought from Drivethrurpg.com.

I can confirm it was an issue with cut and paste information from:
The Temple of Elemental Evil
Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
Against the Slave Lords

I simply Select, copy, paste (CTRL+ALT+V) to a snippet in a new topic (i.e. no text just title).
I then copy, plate, break text up between many snippets.
Then I select and format.
This where random text gets formatted, not what I select.

I will try and see if I can capture this somehow.
I can provide the PDF(s) if you like?

 

[Farling]

@exmortis can you perhaps provide me with a problematic source then? I am attempting to paste in text from a pdf, then splitting it up into snippets and formatting it as you describe, and don't see any problems.

Which option are you using with the special paste? Unformatted text? Unformatted text as a single paragraph?

Is it also useful to know the PDF display program from which the text is being copied? I think I've seen slightly different behaviour from different PDF display programs.

 

[daplunk]

Were these the pdf's that WOTC sourced from the community and had scanned in?

 

[kbs666]

The PDF I got off DriveThruRPG was most certainly a scan of the original module of Temple of Elemental Evil. I don't own the others.

 

[rob]

?
Adding a field to the DB, a dropdown after the suffix and adding a bit of logic that all defaults to "global" constrains anyone who doesn't want to use it how?

Look, I like this product and use it a lot and am one of your biggest boosters but I am also not just a programmer with 25 years experience. I'm a project manager with more than a decade in this sort of thing. I'm used to making end users happy and know the difference between something that sounds easy and something that is easy. You may not want to make the change for other reasons, I know of several, further cluttering the UI and the difficulty of explaining the concept to users are two, but bashing an honest suggestion over an area that is going to keep coming up once the CM goes live seems like a poor plan.

I'm not sure you interpreted my post the way I intended. I said "Sure, it's not hard if you want something that works extremely well for a couple specific use cases and fails utterly for the way the myriad GMs actually WANT to use Realm Works." So I agreed that it would work well for those specific use cases. And I also contended that it would go largely unused, since it wouldn't satisfy the requirements of the vast majority of GMs. At the end of the day, that means we'd invest time in a feature that clutters the already very busy interface, confuses users by introducing yet another thing they need to understand (even if only to ignore it), and ultimately helped few users. That translates to a net-loss from where I sit, and I would expect it to be viewed the same in the eyes of a veteran project manager. Apparently, I was wrong.

I then followed this up with my subsequent post where I outlined the feature we DID introduce. That feature is less intrusive, since it doesn't clutter the interface. It's less confusing to new users, since it's not something they are confronted with and feel compelled to understand immediately. It's less fiddly and prone to error by being tied to tags instead of manually typed text. It's more flexible by virtue of the fact that you can assign multiple tags to content, essentially allowing content to live in multiple namespaces. And then I pointed out that this feature went essentially unused by anyone, even though it was a vastly better solution in multiple ways than the one you're advocating.

So, I stand by my assertion. It wasn't "bashing". It was presenting a pretty compelling case (IMO) for why adding namespaces in the manner you're proposing isn't going to yield a net win. And that case is based on concrete experience.

In no way did I claim, or even imply, that this was a subject of no concern for the future. It very much is. But the solution is NOT namespaces in the way you and others are advocating. That approach is fundamentally flawed for the reasons I outlined.

I believe the CORRECT approach lies in something that we've got mapped out in detail, but we haven't been able to implement yet. It behaves in a manner that (a) non-technical users will readily understand, (b) is much easier for users to manipulate, (c) has profound benefits outside of automatic link detection, and (d) adapts well to wildly different GMing styles. This is something we'll be introducing in 2017. Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to put into place than something simplistic like namespaces.

Does that help clarify things?

 

[Exmortis]

Is it also useful to know the PDF display program from which the text is being copied? I think I've seen slightly different behaviour from different PDF display programs.

good point. Acrobate reader DC.

If there is a better one, even paid, for RW cut/paste I am open for suggestions.

 

[Joe]

@Exmortis

I sent you a PM where we can coordinate you getting me a PDF for troubleshooting.

It's a little strange that I can't easily repro this formatting problem. And I would think that if it were widespread, we'd be getting other reports of it. If anyone else is seeing this same issue, PLEASE pipe up! This is leading me to believe that it is specific to your machine. Do you have any other devices you use (a secondary laptop perhaps)? If so, do you get the same behavior there?

I can only think of one other culprit: that you have some kind of program on your computer that might be intercepting your keypresses. Perhaps some kind of hotkey program, or special software for your mouse/keyboard as sometimes comes with gaming peripherals? Do you get the same behavior when you entirely take the keyboard out of the equation and use nothing but the mouse for selection and picking the menu items and whatnot for copying?

I mention this only because I was mystified myself by some strange behavior in Realm Works, only to discover that my Razer keyboard software was erroneously loading a game profile synced from my home machine and overriding what certain keypresses did.

 

[kbs666]

I then followed this up with my subsequent post where I outlined the feature we DID introduce. That feature is less intrusive, since it doesn't clutter the interface. It's less confusing to new users, since it's not something they are confronted with and feel compelled to understand immediately. It's less fiddly and prone to error by being tied to tags instead of manually typed text. It's more flexible by virtue of the fact that you can assign multiple tags to content, essentially allowing content to live in multiple namespaces. And then I pointed out that this feature went essentially unused by anyone, even though it was a vastly better solution in multiple ways than the one you're advocating.

Except you didn't leave this feature in place until people started really needing it. I use tags for searching all the time but as far as I'm aware, it was certainly never in any patch notes I saw, the ability to control linking through tag assignment never existed while I have owned RW and if the patch notes had ever mentioned it going away explicitly I would have asked why, removing features, even underused ones makes little sense once they are in. Of course your patch notes are opaque by even the rest of the tech industries dismal standards.

 

[rob]

Except you didn't leave this feature in place until people started really needing it. I use tags for searching all the time but as far as I'm aware, it was certainly never in any patch notes I saw, the ability to control linking through tag assignment never existed while I have owned RW and if the patch notes had ever mentioned it going away explicitly I would have asked why, removing features, even underused ones makes little sense once they are in. Of course your patch notes are opaque by even the rest of the tech industries dismal standards.

The feature was in place since around the time RW was first released to the public, or shortly thereafter. I don't remember when the filtering control got turned off, since all we got was negative reactions to that - so that go turned off pretty quickly. The master scoping filter feature was controlled via the top left of the bar across the top, so it was extremely hard to miss. It got "demoted" to a less prominent position early this year, I believe.

Edit: FYI, I'll be going offline for the next couple of days, so I hope this makes sense. If not, we'll need to pick it up once I'm back online.

 

[kbs666]

The feature was in place since around the time RW was first released to the public, or shortly thereafter. I don't remember when the filtering control got turned off, since all we got was negative reactions to that - so that go turned off pretty quickly. The master scoping filter feature was controlled via the top left of the bar across the top, so it was extremely hard to miss. It got "demoted" to a less prominent position early this year, I believe.

Edit: FYI, I'll be going offline for the next couple of days, so I hope this makes sense. If not, we'll need to pick it up once I'm back online.

The master scoping filter has never controlled linking as long as I've owned RW.

There are reasons it shouldn't, its a search filter not a scope in a way that should limit names. I frequently use it to find the empty tags in my realm so I know what I need to work on. If it limited linking to just those topics that would suck.

 

[Exmortis]

@Exmortis

I sent you a PM where we can coordinate you getting me a PDF for troubleshooting.

It's a little strange that I can't easily repro this formatting problem. And I would think that if it were widespread, we'd be getting other reports of it. If anyone else is seeing this same issue, PLEASE pipe up! This is leading me to believe that it is specific to your machine. Do you have any other devices you use (a secondary laptop perhaps)? If so, do you get the same behavior there?

I can only think of one other culprit: that you have some kind of program on your computer that might be intercepting your keypresses. Perhaps some kind of hotkey program, or special software for your mouse/keyboard as sometimes comes with gaming peripherals? Do you get the same behavior when you entirely take the keyboard out of the equation and use nothing but the mouse for selection and picking the menu items and whatnot for copying?

I mention this only because I was mystified myself by some strange behavior in Realm Works, only to discover that my Razer keyboard software was erroneously loading a game profile synced from my home machine and overriding what certain keypresses did.

I will send you some PDFs.

I have seen this on the following:

My Desktop (custom):
Skylake i5 16GB DDR4 / Gigabyte Gaming 7 MB
Windows 10 x64 home
AMD 290x video card
256GB SSD + 512GB SSD.

My Laptop (Mythlogic Sager):
Ivybridge i7 16GB DDR3
Windows 10 x64 Pro
AMD 7970 mobile
512GB SSD + 512GB HD

My work system (SP4):
Skylake i5
Windows 10 x64 Ent
Intel HD530 Onchip video
256GB SSD

All running Acrobat reader DC.

Home I run a corsair keyboard, it has no special software. Asus mouse with no special software. My Dell monitor has built in KVM so I do share both with lappy at home, but I have done a ton of RW work at the lake in the mornings using the lappy keyboard.

Work provides the cheapest no name keyboards/mice money can buy.

Single ultra widescreen 1440p at home, twin 1080p screens at work.

Come to think if it writing this, I have only ever seen this behavior when cut and paste form the PDFs from Drivethrpg, and I only use Acrobat readers.

 

[AEIOU]

May not be related to this but it's a data point. I found that for some PDF's in the past, especially older scans, if I pasted material in with no changes and saved I would frequently crash. If I pasted and changed font to Tahoma, I would infrequently crash.

However, if I religiously did a CTRL-ALT-R after pasting and then reformatted the material I never ever had an issue. It's like there was some invisible high ASCII in there that made RW lock up or also possible the paragraph formatting. Doing a C-A-R purged the demons but it's a royal pain when I want to keep the formatting of the original text....

Nowadays, I test a PDF with a few pastes and if all goes well, I skip the C-A-R step when I want the formatting.