Really hoping new update fixes:

[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]

Originally Posted by kbs666

?
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]

Originally Posted by Farling

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]

Originally Posted by rob

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]

Originally Posted by kbs666

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]

Originally Posted by rob

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.