Recovering old scenes

JavP

I made a scene using DAZ3, new others using DAZ4, and at the moment of update 4 to 4.5, it was impossible to recover scenes made it with 4.

Seems that the new revision of 4.5 has resolved "ghost paths" included in the scenes, and that made imposible to load them, because includes a not exist sub-directory in the path.

I finally can copy good and real paths not founded in the present installation, but existing in a backup of a previous damaged backup of DAZ4... and the scenes are loaded correctly !!!

Now I can use the old scenes DAZ3, DAZ4, and DAZ4.5. Sometimes with problems, but with sollution. And the solution is to copy sometimes "new" ( old but not existing ) content.

At the end, you have a lot of directiries, sometimes duplicated, but you prefer to don't touch them to avoid any trouble.

I would sugest an exit for all these problems:

DAZ and all its contents is very large and is saved in a too much complex tree of directories. And to make this much more complicated, all is saved in Application Files, Documents and Settings, and other directory / ies that the user can define.

I understand that there are soft developers that trend to use Document and Settings. But this directory is dangerous, because in a case of disaster you will loose in a new installation of the disk. And new OS can name it with other names.

Would be much more better to include all DAZ in only one directory. This could make possible to translate all the content from one onstallation to another from one level of the tree to the bottom. For example, letting the executables and licenses in upper levels, and the user's data and content at the bottom.

With this you will have CLEAN installations, easy to admin, and without a lot of problems that you know better than me.

Javier

mjc1016

JavP said:

I understand that there are soft developers that trend to use Document and Settings. But this directory is dangerous, because in a case of disaster you will loose in a new installation of the disk. And new OS can name it with other names.

Would be much more better to include all DAZ in only one directory. This could make possible to translate all the content from one onstallation to another from one level of the tree to the bottom. For example, letting the executables and licenses in upper levels, and the user's data and content at the bottom.

The are a couple of points there that are being made from incorrect or incomplete information...

The first is that it is the software developer's choice to dump everything in that particular folder.

It's not. Microsoft, with Windows Vista declared that was to be the case and all 'user data' was to be put there...which means content for DS/Poser and many other programs. And with all the built-in 'safety' features in Windows, most other directories are difficult to impossible to use like this...either they are completely protected and can't be written to, except by the system (some can't even be touched by the admin login) or don't have the file permissions to make the content in them useful.

Another is that Application Data/user is going to change any time soon...Windows has had that since at least Win2k (I think it started in Win NT), it's just that they finally 'enforced' it's use with Vista.

The third is that DAZ can actually do something about that...it can't. (See point one as to why.) The 'dump it all in one directory' approach won't work because a) you can't put that directory in Program Files and b) Windows doesn't like 'top level directories' much, any longer (well, ones that contain executable files, at least)...so just where would you put it? In the AD/user path? Most AV apps don't like executables there...so you'll play merry hell keeping it running if you have your executables in that folder.

JavP

I don't know how works the graphic runtimes. But... I am developer, and our programs runs ever in our special directory, apart from Application files, and of course from Document and Settings. Much more, ever than I can as home user, I never install nothing in these directories. I have my own "programs" directory. In this, DAZ and Hexagon, are both of the few exceptions.

We only purpose to the user our own name, but he can chenge it. And ever as root directory.

Is not good understand that microsoft does not like with it is not possible. We detect ( it's very easy ) the user that is working in the system, and we build our own user's temporary files into our own directory.

This excludes us from all type of problems with Document and Settings that is the most corrupted dir in all the cases. In fact, I discover that I was not unable to acceed to old data in the migration forced by a hard faillure, because the user was not tha same as in the other disk. Simply the default values for users, was not applied to the dir. It's true that we must install our runtime in Application files. But all our work is appart.

But as I said before, we don't make graphic apps.

Javier