Naming of plugins for presets etc

[gareth]

When trying to create presets, some of the names that show up are unhelpful -- and some don't even show up
Not picking on anyone in particular (I am sure you are aware how much I appreciate these plugins!) ,
If the copy selected and the save as preset do not have the same (or nearly the same name) as the plugin, it is hard work!
PLEASE, before we have gone so far as to be unable to come back, could we have some tidy up releases to get the naming rationalised.

[claudermilk]

A very good point. From a user perspective, I would expect to see the same name in the copy settings dialog as I see in the tool title bar. I can't imagine it's more than just a single line setting somewhere?

[ferdinand-paris]

It's possible that Bez is one of the problem cases. There was change between Bibble 5 and ASP as to where the selective copy got it the plugin name from. B5 used plugin name and ASP uses plugin group. Some smart people used the same name for both, but I was not one of those smart people. In fact the old B5 plugin tutorial encouraged you to have different names.

So I had a choice when I migrated Bez to ASP: whether to do what you want, and which would have meant that we couldn't import B5 settings, or to leave it as it is, which meant that the selective copy dialog said "ferd" rather than "bez".

I have had a discussion with Dave from Corel Labs about this, but nothing was resolved. He said that it's possible to argue that this change is in fact a bug in ASP, but it's also possible to argue that ASP fixes a bug in B5. I was advised to contact Jeff to ask for a change back to B5 behaviour, but I've heard nothing in response.

If I was to change now I would break the entire B5 import capability and invalidate existing ASP saved settings. I guess I could create a version of Bez with this stripped out, but would only do so if there is overwhelming demand.

Such a small thing with such large implications.

F_P

[gareth]

looking at copy selective settings after what you say f-p, I think the group idea is inconvenient ( I almost use the word wrong ) .
Within one group it is not possible to tell which plugin the parameters refer to.
Given a group with one member, it is only one 'translation' to remember; when more than one ... I change my mind ... I will use the word wrong.

[FotoLars]

Hi!

I have had the same thoughts as gareth above. The grouping of several plugins into one header makes it very hard to identify a certain plugin's parameters. It would be very nice if this could be sorted out as soon as possible, rather now than much later, before lots and lots of presets have been made by each user and possibly have been put up on the forum for sharing as in the old B5 forum.

The same goes for the naming conventions as ferdinand-paris said earlier in this thread. The sooner the issue regarding the naming standard could be resolved, the better for the future. If there was a bug in B5, well, that's bad, but maybe more effort could be directed towards ASP and its behaviour with the present, and future, plugins. Changing lots and lots of presets much later in time rather than now takes an awful lot of time...

In the long run, it seems to be a bad idea to possibly force the plugin developers to maintain several plugin architectures in order to just satisfy a less well-documented/well-defined plugin naming convention in ASP. Some things were changed to the worse in the transition B5 ---> ASP, such as the extremely stupid way of including a whole bloody directory path when importing photos into a catalogue, so why couldn't some changes turn out to be for the better?


Cheers,

Lars Nilsson
Lund, Sweden

[ferdinand-paris]

By way of a little further explanation. One view when we were porting plugins to ASP was that ASP was a new program and we should not try to preserve backwards compatibility. Some took this approach, but I did not. (ASP itself doesn't take this approach, as it reads B5 settings for built-in tools in most instances.) So the problem of using misleading plugin groupnames in the selective copy dialog occurs where authors went for backwards compatibility, or were simple not aware of the problem. From what I see there were some authors who made more or less a clean start, but didn't realise that there was a change in the selective copy display name, and so didn't use a more informative groupname variable for their plugin.

In both B5 and ASP the settings stored in the XMP file use the "groupname.settingname" format. This was known. So for Bez you get settings in the XMP like bopt:ferd.bez_lighten="0". I don't see this as a problem, as it at least stores group settings together, so long as the settings names were meaningful. The name displayed in the selective copy dialog is just that - only a display name, and I think that Corel could switch to using the pluginname variable without breaking anything. I don't *think* that it will break stored settings, as these are driven off the settings stored in the XMP, and ASP can link the preset to the stored settings regardless of which variable is displayed as the heading. At least I think that's right.

But you can easily see that if the plugin author changes the groupname variable after the plugin is released, then it breaks everything. My Bez example would become bopt:Bez.bez_lighten="0", which is regarded by ASP as the setting of a completely different plugin. So it trashes stored settings, and will also break stored presets. So I am reluctant to change now.

F_P

[gareth]

I don't think backwards compatibility should be a reason to avoid rationalising the naming.
Many of the plugins I used in B5 do not exist for ASP.
Even where they do exist, there are changes to most of them (or to the core engine) which means they have to be revisited.
I am therefore (slowly) reworking rather a lot of images anyway
Presets are an important part of that reworking process, which is why I came across the problem ...
I consider this topic urgent -- and to be dealt with before the rest of the world is using ASP in 'production mode'.

[afx]

I consider this topic urgent -- and to be dealt with before the rest of the world is using ASP in 'production mode'.

AMEN.

And the more people report it via the Monkey, the higher it gets prioritized.

cheers
afx

[claudermilk]

From Ferdinand's description of the internal working of name vs group, I agree: ASP is broken. It's set up to foul up the selective copy feature & needs to be fixed ASAP.

For me, I consider ASP to a wholly new program with no backwards compatibility to B5. Too much has changed too deeply in ASP vs B5 for me to think that old settings will be valid.

[gareth]

@afx -- reported to the monkey