[Genma Saotome]

copperpen, on 05 February 2018 - 01:43 AM, said:

Once again I see we have a minor spat about how the application of shapes and textures in a route can or "should" be done.

It occurs because both MSTS and OR are data driven applications -- they provide no assets of their own. The data is not binary (or when it is its easy to convert back to readable strings). And so the environment is fundamentally fully open. There are a few exceptions where stuff has slipped into the code that should not be... the calculation of the Davis parameters is one such example (the .eng or .wag should include the choice of which version of Davis to use and the small number of parametric values to compute A, B, and C).

A few data transactions do apply to multiple files; for those one must proceed very carefully no mater how the task is accomplished. For the rest it is (and should remain) anything goes. The occasional pain that creates to support staff is vastly outweighed by the ease and gains in creativity of the mass of end users.

IMO it would be a major mistake to lock everything up.

Needless to say I am not a fan of Apple application software.

[Goku]

Genma Saotome, on 05 February 2018 - 11:01 AM, said:

OF COURSE one would not hand edit a global shape name to another global shape name in ordinary cicumstances... but I'll give you one that isn't ordinary: If you want to convert a route using xtraks to ScaleRail, UKFineScale, or DBTracks you are not going to do that by removing the original and placing the replacement. Instead you are going to pull up your superior text editor, the one that does edits on filesets, and methodically replace the xtracs name with the subsitution (e.g., a2t100m to SR_2tStr_c_100m) across the file set of *.w in that route.

But what if you want custom shape for standard a2t100m tracks and other for tunnel 100m track? Or for buffer tracks? If Kuju didn't provide separate shape definitions (as you wish), then you have to edit all shapes by hand, not by "superior text editor".
I think you don't understand the problem at all and we are talking about totally different things. Your examples are not even close to this problem.
If there will be no shape file names in tsection.dat then how the heck Route Editor will know what shape to put in .W file? You need procedural tracks to solve this issue.

Genma Saotome, on 05 February 2018 - 11:01 AM, said:

Once again one works in the world file with an editor because it is the most efficient tool for the specific task at hand.

No, it's not good way of doing things. Yes, with MSTS bad design it's sometimes necessary to get good result, but suggesting it as superior solution to be used in the future is insane.

[Genma Saotome]

I had not thought about the initial lookup seeking the path information... yeah... that does need the file name. However, once placed, there is no further use for the name except for the world file conveying to the display software what shape file to display.

There are VERY rare circumstances when you do hand-edit the whole Uid() construct to place roads and tracks and that's the difficult-to-solve matter of deliberately introducing bad joints to skew the track slightly. You have to compute the qdirection() and position() values outside of the editor and plug those values into the UiD() block. NOT recommended for noobs.

> No, it's not good way of doing things. Yes, with MSTS bad design it's sometimes necessary to get good result, but suggesting it as superior solution to be used in the future is insane.

Sez you. You will never build TSRE up to do everything that is needed by the route builder. Some of that is due to ignorance, some of that is simply a proper consideration of where to put your time, some of that is what you are interested in that week, and the rest is a cost:benefit judgement that says don't bother doing some things. All understandable and predictable. But on the route builder side, we will still encounter issues and we will still work the problem to a solution with the implementation often requiring a text editor.

[Goku]

Quote

I had not thought about the initial lookup seeking the path information... yeah... that does need the file name. However, once placed, there is no further use for the name except for the world file conveying to the display software what shape file to display.

Yes. Good we finally agree.

Quote

Sez you. You will never build TSRE up to do everything that is needed by the route builder. Some of that is due to ignorance, some of that is simply a proper consideration of where to put your time, some of that is what you are interested in that week, and the rest is a cost:benefit judgement that says don't bother doing some things.

TSRE isn't perfect of course. As I said, using text editor to edit advanced data is sometimes unpleasant necessity. But it's not a thing you can recommend for future solutions.