18 minutes ago, andy1252 said:

. It would be nice to be able to have a single addon group containing all the store-bought products so I could activate them all at once to check for updates

Make a folder underneath your "Official" Addon Linker Folder and put your Official addons in that folder. Then when you refresh you can select that folder and it will select all of the Official addons at once. Just Like the Community Header the Official Header is only a divider and cannot be selected only folders and files underneath both. This allows you to categorize them just like you can do under the Community Folder

 

Regards

Edited January 6, 20215 yr by Denwagg

yes @andy1252, what you are describing was my first idea too, just a quick 'value' somewhere on an addon (would probably have been a simple checkbox in the same screen where you can already add a description or a link for an addon).

Then i came across some difficulties when doing the change. Can't remember exactly but it was mainly due to the way the 'refresh' of both panels are implemented by using the community folder to see if a link is active or not, i would have certainly found a solution if i had persevered in that direction though. Finally (not sure why once again 😁), i thought it would be better to split everything up and manage the official addons separately (i also try to keep in mind that some users with a lot less experience than us use this little tool and i'm a bit afraid of what they might be doing with their official addons if they mix things up)

Although i preferred the other solution (yours), i finally added all those specific options to manage the official addons (which i thought would be easier but finally ended up being more work than i first thought, so i probably would have spent the time better by trying to implement the first idea 🙃). At the end, keeping the official separated from the other ones didn't seem too bad for me, but yeah i haven't that many addons so it did not really cross my mind that it would be annoying to recreate a new structure for folders for the official addons. Also, In my mind, official addons would have been sorted by vendors (so a bit different from free addons) but that was just an assumption that doesn't match the reality of 'to each his own' 😶🙊.

Like @Denwagg said, in the official folder you can create all the structure you want (but if i undestand correctly your post, probably you noticed that already but you don't really want to recreate a new structure there that will be quite close to the one you already have for 'community addons'). For the specific need of enabling all official addons at once, i can also add a 'right click' 'enable all addons in the selected folder' so you would be able to click on 'official' and it will do that for you (for now there is already the option to 'disable all' but not 'enable all'). That would at least eliminate the need to create a folder at the highest level just for that (like Denwagg correctly said)

to sum up (about time you will say 👀) : i'm a bit lost with these changes because i'm not sure i took the better direction, and that's also why it still hasn't been released 'officialy'. Obviously changing this again would break my heart (read brain 😱😜) but, on the other hand, i don't really want to add stuff that is not practical or not easily useable. The creation of the second folder bothered me a bit since the start but then got used to it so after a while it didnt bother me anymore (was problably victim of the 'convince yourself that something is not bad and it will look good after all' syndrom 😁)

Thanks for your input as always 👍🍻

Edited January 6, 20215 yr by Bad_T

Bad_T

4 minutes ago, Bad_T said:

Obviously changing this again would break my heart (read brain 😱😜) but, on the other hand, i don't really want to add stuff that is not practical or not easily useable. The creation of the second folder bothered me a bit since the start but then got used to it so after a while it didnt bother me anymore (was problably of the 'convince yourself that something is not bad and it will look good' syndrom 😁)

Thanks for your input as always 👍🍻

Bad_T

I cannot speak for everyone but I have been using it and loving the changes since day one of your beta release. In a way this gives more control to those that purchase thru Marketplace, I now see a clear path forward to control all of my addons should I wish to purchase directly from MarketPlace in the future. 

But I'm sure there are those that will not understand and mess up their purchased and cause redownloads of those or the entire sim and they will be very upset and blame it on your app.

So I'm happy with it the way it is for me. Perhaps leave it here as a sticky post only for someone who understands and want the flexibility. I would not change the Official folder to behave differently than the community folder. 

They say never look a gift horse in the mouth. You app is such a great gift. Thank you.

Hi again @Bad_T, and thanks for your reply. I'd sort of guessed that there might be a technical reason for the way you'd done this, as a simple check box approach would seem more logical.

It's absolutely not a problem for me. Your wonderful organizer does 100% of what I need it to do. The whole thing with the official folder just got my interest when it popped up in here, but is in no way something I feel I need - I've already worked round that issue by moving stuff out of there. I try not to buy stuff from the MS Store, it was only an early couple of things and then a couple of sale things, so most stuff I buy goes into the community folder anyway.

And @Denwagg, thanks for your reply as well. I get what you're saying but I don't want to take that approach. I thought it might be possible to have the target folder (community or official) just as an attribute of my exisiting folder structure, rather than have it (the target folder) be a primary characteristic of a set of new, separate folders.

As they say - Saul Goodman! ("S'all good man", in case anyone's not seen "Better Call Saul" - and if you haven't - stop messing around with the sim and go watch it)

I am having a weird problem with the latest version 0.8.7679.19448. I placed an aircraft (posky744_baw_CTV_), it is used with PSX 747 and WidePSX.

I have since removes the file completely from the folder but when I run Linker it shows in the right panel in purple. I uninstalled Linker, removed all the folders however when I run the program the ghost file still shows? Any idea where it would be coming from? I did right click and select delete invalid links but it says no invalid link to delete.

Thanks again for great program, John

edit, I solved the problem as the file was left over in the actual 'community' folder even with everything unchecked in 'Linker'

Removing it manually solved the problem.

Edited January 14, 20215 yr by johnh1984
solved

@johnh1984cool that you could fix it, yeah it was probably left over, let me know if you need further help and thank you for your feedback.

All of my sceneries (made by me) are shown in red in the addons pane. They do work, but what have I done wrong to deserve this? 😉

All sceneries can be found here for inspection/testing: Flightsim.to • Profile of Pontiac51

Did I say I use this tool on EVERY start of MSFS. It makes life so much easier. Great work! 

 

 

Edited January 15, 20215 yr by pontiac51

Hello @pontiac51,

thanks for your feedback. Unless there is a bug (which is possible) 😱 the red colors means you have two folder with the same name in 2 different subfolders.

In your screenshot we can't see that because some folders are closed and there are too many of them. If you can't see that, can you maybe use the option 'expand all', then 'export to XLSX' and check inside if you see duplicates. You can also send me the file in a mail (i will send you address in PM) if you want me to check.

The red acts only like a warning, because the community folder has only 1 level so it would not be possible to activate two addons having the same folder name (when activating the second you would get an error).

Let me know thank you.

Edited January 15, 20215 yr by Bad_T

Ah, I know what happened. My DEV folder is also linked into your programm. This makes for much easier developing. And of course once finished I copy the sceneries over to the community folder (that is located on the faster SSD). That's why they appear twice. 

So, no need for me to worry then. Thx for answering so quickly. 

Edited January 15, 20215 yr by pontiac51

oky cool thanks for letting me know, you can leave it that way if you want, the red will not cause any problem (it's just a visual warning), i can also add an option to remove the 'red indication' in the next version so that people can disable it if they find that annoying.

have a nice weekend !

Edited January 15, 20215 yr by Bad_T

Thank you very much. But now that I know why I can easily live with it. It is a good feature! 

I think you have created one of the essential applications for MSFS. Hats off to you, sir! 😉

hello guys,

i ask for a little help and information, maybe some of the more aware users can give me some additional info or confirmations.

I got a few requests to add into the tool a feature to have the addons loaded in a certain sequence (bit like it was possible to do with FSX/P3D).

i would love to have such a feature and it would be great, but i think it's 'impossible' to do it properly because all is loaded simply by alphabetical order. So the only solution would be to create a link with a different name (i have already a basic feature for that, you can rename a link if you want to force an addon to be loaded before another one but it's certainly not super great 😞).

Has there been some progress regarding this, did someone maybe find some info on how to improve this. Is there maybe some other files that are used to determine the order of loading (from what i know contents.xml is not used for that) or something else that i'm not aware of and that could be done ? Or is it just like i thought, 'alphabetical order only' 😳.

And if it's unfortunately only alphabetical order, any idea on a features that could help with that. I dont' really see anything that would be simple to use and undertandable for everyone. A kind user gave me some idea like renaming all links to 1_xxxx, 2_xxxx based on a sequence defined in the tool, but i don't know, it seems quite complicated and i'm not sure i would like to have my addons named liked that. What happens then if i want to insert and addon in 20th position, and i have already 300 addons installed, i would have to rename 280 links to insert the 20_xxxx .. it does not seem not very natural.

well probably not much to do, just looking for a confirmation mainly or if someone has the magic idea 😉, thank you 👍

No matter what you do, the bottom line is that they will be loaded in alpha order. So your only option IS to rename each item. Then, as you note, what happens if you need to insert an entry? IMHO, it's not impossible but not really worth the effort and the potential for corrupting the file structure is there. If there's a system glitch while files are being renamed, etc.

Thanks for the confirmation @vgbaron, that's unfortunately what i thought, and yes renaming lots of folders to insert new numerotated links has its risks so it doesn't seem like a very viable and secure-proof solution. I guess we're a bit stuck with this until MS/Asobo changes the way addons are managed and probably the day they change the way addons are managed (which might be sooner than we think hopefully) the tool will not be really needed anymore.

🍻

Edited January 17, 20215 yr by Bad_T

Most people are doing this manually at the moment, and it is normally for just a few problem files.  I have a few with z- at the start of the folder names, but they are for different mods, so it doesn't matter if they are clustered together at the bottom, just as long as they are below their specific master mod folder.

It is a shame, as it would be a great feature, but it isnt clear how it could be implemented through your app (which is superb by the way!).

Maybe some bright spark on here may come up with a reasonable idea.

I would say a sort to bottom feature would still be useful, if it just put a z- or later alphanumeric character in front, as I have never had to sequence three folders for the same mod up to now, and if that happens on rare occasions, then it would require a manual intervention, which most people are capable of I think.

What alphanumeric characters come after Z?  Maybe it could just go to two or three sort levels - I can't see it needing more than that.

Edited January 17, 20215 yr by bobcat999