Folders!

A place where new features are announced and discussed. (Feature suggestions go in the suggestions topic.)
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Rias
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Folders!

Post by Rias »

Folders are now for sale anywhere books are sold! PUT any written document, from letters to pages ripped from books, into a folder. Folders will act like books, with any documents in them serving as the "pages". The usual book commands/mechanics apply, with the following extra features:

- When LOOKing at and PAGE-ing through folders, the current written document will show its short description. This includes labels, meaning one could label a letter (or similar) and then PUT it into a folder and the label will make it easy to know which document you're on at the moment, or keep an eye out for while PAGEing through the folder contents.
- PAGE REMOVE can be used on folders to pull the current written document back out of the folder, in exactly the same state as when it was put in.
- Data-wise, it squashes the documents within the folder down into being just a piece of the single folder item, which means on the back-end this saves us a little database bloat with fewer item records/lookups/iterations. Get all those written documents put into folders for the good of the server!

Admittedly, this was a late-night project and release, so it's bound to be a little buggy. The way it numbers things might be a bit fiddly. And if the worst happens and some documents somehow manage to disappear, please DO NOT PANIC. We have backups of all deleted items, and I've also done a manual full backup just before this release. If a written document gets lost please report it with the BUG command and include some of the unique writing on it that we can use to track down the lost document for you.

To-do list items for a less sleepy time include the ability to re-order folder items without needing to remove/page around/put them back, a PAGE LIST for folders to list each document with its short description and page number, and the ability to PAGE <#> to go directly to a specific page (this will work for books as well).
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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Taliaferro
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Re: Folders!

Post by Taliaferro »

Beautiful. Thank you!
artus
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Re: Folders!

Post by artus »

I just know it has to be awesome whenever you come up with something. Love you, Rias.
Prism
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Re: Folders!

Post by Prism »

Love this. Quick specifications though, since I’m not online to check. Can we put these inside of our portfolio? If not, I would love to be able to use my portfolio as an organizer for my folders. I’m definitely going to end up having three or four of them for different subject matters
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Rias
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Re: Folders!

Post by Rias »

Prism wrote: Thu Dec 22, 2022 12:38 am Can we put these inside of our portfolio?
Good call. You can now!
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
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jerc
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Re: Folders!

Post by jerc »

First impressions: super cool! No more feeling guilty about document hordes!

The page insertion is a tad wonky - I would expect that putting a page would add it *after* the current one, not before. The current "insert-before" approach makes adding things to the end unintuitive (and buggy! See #8311), since you have to put it when the folder is closed. I would suggest going with "insert-after" like with PAGE ADD, and make adding things to the beginning a matter of putting it in while the folder is closed, conceptually at "page zero".

As I watch my folder grow, I also find myself wishing for some general quality-of-life improvements to book-like things. Since they're linear-access and we now have a command rate limit, seeking to a specific page now takes pages/10 seconds, along with the spamming from all of the paging. A "page N" command to flip directly to a specific page number would make that a lot nicer.

Along with that, it would also be nice to have some sort of index that could be looked at like a component of books/folders that support it, which would list out all of the pages/numbers at once. Could do this manually client-side or with an "index" page that's painstakingly kept up to date, but if we could pretend that page labels are like those little filing labels that stick out of big binders, it would be a lot more pleasant to use.

Those two improvements would fix what I miss from keeping everything in my portfolio - being able to enumerate all of my documents and having random-access to them.
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Rias
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Re: Folders!

Post by Rias »

Per the recent changelogs:

- It is now possible to go directly to a specific page of a book (or folder) by typing PAGE <PAGENUMBER> (or PAGE <BOOK> <PAGENUMBER>). Example: PAGE 5 to go directly to page 5 of a held book/folder.

- The PAGE LIST command can now be used with books/folders to provide a list of page numbers, each with a brief snippet of that page's writing. (I did manage to remember to make it check for languages!)
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Taliaferro
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Re: Folders!

Post by Taliaferro »

jerc wrote: Thu Dec 22, 2022 8:54 am
The page insertion is a tad wonky - I would expect that putting a page would add it *after* the current one, not before. The current "insert-before" approach makes adding things to the end unintuitive (and buggy! See #8311), since you have to put it when the folder is closed. I would suggest going with "insert-after" like with PAGE ADD, and make adding things to the beginning a matter of putting it in while the folder is closed, conceptually at "page zero".
If I understand you correctly, (and if I understand me correctly -- I only just now started to fiddle with folders -- you can add page after the previous one by paging forward in the folder before you add a new one. It is indeed wonky and unintuitive, but it seems to work.

Thank you for the folders, and the new paging commands! Both are a godsend. It's going to take a lot of work to organize my hundred or so letters -- I'd been planning to do it manually with a book or journal already -- but now it's completely doable, as opposed to being on the order of one of the trickier Labors of Hercules.
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Taliaferro
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Re: Folders!

Post by Taliaferro »

Incidentally, it occurs to me I ought to ask -- do you mind us having absurdly enormous folders? I mean, is it going to be a strain on the game's resources, or anything? I'd be happy to cut it down to a reasonable number of pages, if so.
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Rias
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Re: Folders!

Post by Rias »

Taliaferro wrote: Thu Dec 22, 2022 11:54 pm Incidentally, it occurs to me I ought to ask -- do you mind us having absurdly enormous folders? I mean, is it going to be a strain on the game's resources, or anything? I'd be happy to cut it down to a reasonable number of pages, if so.
Nope, that's why they were made - for the folks who have tons of letters and need to get them all organized in one place. Keeping them all in a folder (or few folders) is better on the server than having all the individual letter items on their own. I admit you were one of the chief inspirations; seeing you struggle to juggle all those letters from time to time made it pretty clear that we needed a better way of keeping that kind of thing organized and convenient. I'm glad they're working well for you, and please feel free to give additional suggestions or feedback!
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