Downloaded file names munged into unreadability

[holliberri]

Several files I've downloaded today offered to save with a filename that will be incomprehensible if I don't rename them in the Save dialogue. The file type seems to be recognized, and I don't expect there to be any problem opening or using the files, it's just that I'll have to open them to know what they are, since the default filename makes no sense.

 

This seems to be related to "illegal" characters or extraneous periods causing some confusion:

 

Diverse Voices !Orc male part 1! offers to download as m-1174307491-TESSource.part1 (presumably due to the ! marks)

 

Diverse Voices !Orc female part 1! offers to download as f-1174303584-TESSource.part1 (ditto)

 

.... do you really want me to link to all the other 9 downloads for Diverse Voices (which all have this problem? Please say no ;) .

 

Gift of Kynareth offers to update as GiftOfKynareth_V2-1174304963-TESSource.1Full (which almost looks OK, except that the version is not "2", but "2.1", which ".1Full" is placed as the extension in error).

 

So far that's all I've found, as I'm still dealing with the Diverse Voices downloads.

 

No, wait, here's another:

Nicos Dreadweave Bow and Arrows (Nicos Dreadweave Bow and Arrows v-1174284113-TESSource.1) -- and this one, as well as the Diverse Voices Dark Elf male part 5 download, Firefox did not recognize the file type all of a sudden. Both were seen as "Bin" files, with an extenstion of .1 and .m respectively. This is getting ugly, now)

 

Oh, all right, here's the rest:

 

Diverse Voices !dark elf male part 3! (de-1174275987-TESSource.m)

Diverse Voices !wood and high elf female part 3! (we-1174298760-TESSource.f)

Diverse Voices !wood and high elf female part 2! (we-1174297614-TESSource.f)

Diverse Voices !wood and high elf female part 1! (we-1174290347-TESSource.f)

 

all of these were seen as RAR files despite the borked extension, but this one below was suddenly considered a BIN--

 

Diverse Voices !dark elf male part 5! (de-1174279415-TESSource.m) -- maybe it's a *.7z file or something, but of course I have no idea, since the file is not correctly named.

 

Diverse Voices !dark elf male part 4! (de-1174279235-TESSource.m) Firefox now recognizes this as a RAR file again

Diverse Voices !dark elf male part 2! (de-1174273469-TESSource.m) still a RAR, as per Firefox

Diverse Voices !dark elf male part 1! (de-1174256342-TESSource.m)

 

Interestingly, the main file, Diverse Voices !esp! comes up fine as Diverse Voices !ESP!-1174272095-TESSource.rar -- at this point, I'm happy to overlook the loss of the version number.

 

Got yet another; Grond Verns Arms and Armor Pak 1 comes up as GVarms with no extension and no file type. No idea if the problem is the mod or the redirect.

 

Armors of Gaia and Assassins Abode both transfer me to the big file server normally, but do not offer any files to save (and no error page or anything).

 

OK, that's everything I found in trying to catch up with the new mods from yesterday and today.

 

Hope it's helpful to know.

[Dark0ne]

Thanks for the report, very handy. Wish everyone would give detailed reports like these ;)

 

Yup, I changed the system last night to allow the system to use the filename people use (plus all the additional stuff like the unique ID and site name) but it seems lots of people like to use funky characters in their filenames that plays hell with the server and system.

 

I've changed the system again to use the file name given in the mod entry (i.e. not the filename on your HDD but the name given to the file in the database) which is put under some validation to make sure it doesn't have funky characters.

 

Hopefully that'll sort it.

 

EDIT: Oh, the people who uploaded today will probably need to reupload to fix the problems.

[holliberri]

Thanks for the report, very handy. Wish everyone would give detailed reports like these ;)

Well, thanks, that makes it worth having gone to the trouble :) .

 

Yup, I changed the system last night to allow the system to use the filename people use (plus all the additional stuff like the unique ID and site name) but it seems lots of people like to use funky characters in their filenames that plays hell with the server and system.

 

I've changed the system again to use the file name given in the mod entry (i.e. not the filename on your HDD but the name given to the file in the database) which is put under some validation to make sure it doesn't have funky characters.

Well, if you're asking, what would really help me personally is if the files were named as follows:

 

modname - listed version number - TESSource (if you must).extension.

 

I would also like it if you disallowed the uploading of loose ESPs, but instead required that all files be archived.

 

Here's my reasoning:

 

As for the loose ESPs-- well, loose esps make it impossible to determine whether a file has been functionally updated, unless the version number is included in the filename, which it is not, always, which further assumes that the modder incremented the version when updating, which they do not always remember to do. I'm sure you know by now that a lot of people have taken up the extremely annoying habit of clicking "update" to bring their files back into visibility on the "Today's Activity" list, without having actually changed anything, including the description. Now, I am one of those people who does use the Today's Activity list to keep up with mods, so when I see that a mod I have has been "updated" I will at least go to the page... but if the mod is only a loose ESP, because the datestamp on the file will be the date I downloaded it, not the date of its last modification, I have no way of knowing if the file has in fact been updated, or whether I'm just boosting the modder's download stats and wasting my bandwidth, since many modders either don't or forget to update their version numbers or make a note of their changelog or something that would indicate that an update had in fact occurred, or make a noticeable change in their description (such as adding a mirror download) that would justify "activity", even if the file itself had not been updated.

 

Obviously, if all files were archived, I could compare the timestamp of the previous file to the timestamp of the newly downloaded file and see what was what. The modder would still have an extra download :( , but at least I would know what files I had on my PC.

 

As for the naming scheme-- at the moment, I use a renaming program to rename the files I download from here (and I've got Gigs of data from here) in order to be able to organize them in a way that I can find.

 

With the previous format, it was easy enough; one filter to remove "-TESSource" from the end, and one to remove the first 4-character site ID number (which was not only borking my sorting, but the number wasn't even the same as the FileID, so I couldn't even use it to, say go back to the description page), and move the version number to the end of the filename (before the extension, obviously). I only had to take additional steps to manually rename those few files with a version number not in the filter parameters (such as ones using more than 3 characters).

 

With the new changes, I'm not sure that I won't have to manually rename every file, as filters may no longer work, and frankly, the filenames as they previously stood, and as I was getting them in my previous post (I also downloaded a bunch of files that downloaded fine) contain information that is of no use to me as a user, but impacts my viewing/searching the files in my file manager.

 

I don't care about what the SiteID of the mod is-- why would I? Why does it need to be included? What I care about is the name, the version number, and the fact that I downloaded it from TESSource as opposed to somewhere else.

 

Is it possible to limit the download filename to just the information that the downloader needs?