Is there a limit for the add-on.xml?

[Bachian 10]

18 minutes ago, simbol said:

Find my posts on Avsim about the XML method and the consequences for effects, sounds and textures resolution before proceeding so you don't damage your simulator.

Regards 

Simbol 

I'll look for them. Thanks!

[Lorby_SI 2,042]

FWIW, the limit also seems to be on the total number of XML files. As you can have as many addon components in those XML files as you want, you could try merging your existing files to reduce their number. (for example one XML per developer, one XML per continent, one XML per aircraft type, etc...)

For the record: you can not damage your simulator with external addon definitions any more than you could with the classic method, quite the contrary, that is the whole puropse of this exercise. You can get into trouble if you edit/copy/overwrite files in the core simulator directories. But if an external definition messes things up, just delete the xml. Or better still, find a sequence/organization that works.

Best regards

[Bachian 10]

On 11/13/2017 at 11:55 PM, Lorby_SI said:

FWIW, the limit also seems to be on the total number of XML files. As you can have as many addon components in those XML files as you want, you could try merging your existing files to reduce their number. (for example one XML per developer, one XML per continent, one XML per aircraft type, etc...)

For the record: you can not damage your simulator with external addon definitions any more than you could with the classic method, quite the contrary, that is the whole puropse of this exercise. You can get into trouble if you edit/copy/overwrite files in the core simulator directories. But if an external definition messes things up, just delete the xml. Or better still, find a sequence/organization that works.

Best regards

That's the exactly reason I started to use XML instead Scenery library method. It's safer and we do not mess with the original files. However, this limitation/bug is a pain.
 

 

[Lorby_SI 2,042]

4 hours ago, Bachian said:

That's the exactly reason I started to use XML instead Scenery library method. It's safer and we do not mess with the original files. However, this limitation/bug is a pain.
 

 

Personally, I have yet to hit this limitation, because I bundled my addons into only a few XMLs from the beginning. Aircraft are organized by developer, scenery addons geograpically and/or by type. For example, I only have one XML for all the old legacy aircraft that I install into the same folder every time. One of my customers has literally thousands of scenery addons organized by XML, and he has them bundled by continent. So he only has about 20 XML files in total, and some have more than 1000 entries.

Granted, there is the issue that you cannot disable a single entry in an XML natively, but the P4AO works around that.

Best regards

[Boeing or not going 578]

Reported the same day of the 4.1 release. Until they fix it for real this time add all your scenery through the old method of scenery.cfg entries manually or in the in-game menus.

[Lorby_SI 2,042]

21 minutes ago, 777200lrf said:

Reported the same day of the 4.1 release. Until they fix it for real this time add all your scenery through the old method of scenery.cfg entries manually or in the in-game menus.

Why?

I am obviously missing something here, but why do you need so many XML files? You could manage all your addons with one single XML if you wanted to. 

Best regards

[ZKOKQ 984]

17 minutes ago, 777200lrf said:

Reported the same day of the 4.1 release. Until they fix it for real this time add all your scenery through the old method of scenery.cfg entries manually or in the in-game menus.

Did you read Olivers post above yours?  Why use the breakable scenery cfg. Not good advice IMHO

[simbol 5,821]

18 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

Why?

I am obviously missing something here, but why do you need so many XML files? You could manage all your addons with one single XML if you wanted to. 

Best regards

The only disadvantage I can think of is that when something goes wrong it is harder to isolate it because everything is bundled.

Users would need to edit the XML, save, try, etc.

Not everyone is an IT expert as you.

Simbol

[Lorby_SI 2,042]

Just now, simbol said:

Not everyone is an IT expert as you.

I am more concerned about organization, not technology. Having a lot of XML files clutters things up, makes it harder to keep track. That has nothing to do with being an expert, just keeping the sim tidy. Having 500 different XMLs as opposed to 500 entries in a single file (like it used to be in the scenery.cfg) does not sound very attractive to me.

And I think that not everyone is aware that you don't have to create an XML file for every single addon, which is why I keep repeating it. 

Best regards

[Boeing or not going 578]

41 minutes ago, Travelling_Wilbury said:

Did you read Olivers post above yours?  Why use the breakable scenery cfg. Not good advice IMHO

I really doubt most simmers have the ability to create a single xml file for every scenery they have. breakable scenery.cfg? Never heard this. It's a bug reported on their forums in 4.0 you had a crash before loading and in 4.1 you get black textures if you have over a set number of xml files as posted before.

[Boeing or not going 578]

43 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

Why?

I am obviously missing something here, but why do you need so many XML files? You could manage all your addons with one single XML if you wanted to. 

Best regards

 

Many scenery installs their xml files, and my suggestion is just temporary until LM fix the bug. Not everybody has the knowledge or time to learn to use a single xml for all your scenery

[Lorby_SI 2,042]

8 minutes ago, 777200lrf said:

Not everybody has the knowledge or time to learn to use a single xml for all your scenery

And that's OK. My point is, that if you decide to go the XML route, give it a little thought and do it right. There are several tools out there to help you.

IMHO the real problem is, that developers themselves are being careless, using whatever method works for them. I wish that some form of common ground could be found. The spec suggests the "one config per developer" approach.

The only "danger" (if you want to call it that) is, that users might be tempted to run old installers, pointing them directly at the sim. As a result, files may be overwritten that can only be recovered through a repair/reinstall (just like it always was). At least let people know that there is an alternative.

Best regards

[ZKOKQ 984]

30 minutes ago, 777200lrf said:

I really doubt most simmers have the ability to create a single xml file for every scenery they have. breakable scenery.cfg? Never heard this. It's a bug reported on their forums in 4.0 you had a crash before loading and in 4.1 you get black textures if you have over a set number of xml files as posted before.

Oliver (Lorby) very kindly made a tool that will do XML for you, with hardly any effort. Most simmers use this tool. Maybe you should check it out. Forum right here at Avsim

[Lorby_SI 2,042]

44 minutes ago, 777200lrf said:

breakable scenery.cfg? Never heard this.

Look for posts where people complain that the scenery library is suddenly empty. Happens sometimes when the scenery.cfg is edited manually or an incompatible installer screws up the character encoding. Same goes for all .cfg and .xml files actually, resulting in calls for help when for example the addons menu is missing from the sim, no more aircraft are shown in the selection dialog etc.(we had those for ages too, you could always screw up config files).

Best regards

[simbol 5,821]

All I am saying is that we need to understand that not everybody is tech savy, as developers we should always think on the end user first and put ourselves on their positions, etc. a lot of users find it very scary and difficult just to launch the command prompt, even more start modifying their config files under PD3, XML files, etc.

Giving my experience by giving remote support via team-viewer to users of this forum, I can tell you that having add-on's declared on separated XML files is of a great help in debugging and finding what is causing problems with their PD3, problems vary from systems to systems and from add-on's to add-on's so having the ability to disable individual add-on's is very important.

I think having all add-on's on a single XML is a way around for this problem but I don't think it is the right solution and certainly it is not what LM had intended either (despite of their bug), given the vast amount of add-on's existent for PD3 it is very easy to install something that could break or change a setting on your simulator that you would like to revert, and if everything is inside of a single XML it will make very difficult for an standard user to find out what is causing a conflict, a crash or any other issue.

This is just my two cents, everyone is free to do what they like on their PCs, if you run into troubles just yell, I will be here to help.

Regards,
Simbol