[RELZ] Wrye Bash -- Thread No. 40 : IV - Oblivion

» Tue May 17, 2011 4:30 am

Why was it requested again? I thought it was because WB was mistakenly marking mods with a NoMerge tag as mergeable, but I think that may be fixed now.

» Tue May 17, 2011 4:45 am

I thought it was just a neat way to show which mods were mergeable but shouldn't be merged, a visual indicator of the NoMerge tag. It's not in the way at all, it conveys important information at a glance, and it's pretty. It's the same reasoning for the showing mergeable mods in green :shrug:

» Tue May 17, 2011 11:37 am

I thought it was just a neat way to show which mods were mergeable but shouldn't be merged, a visual indicator of the NoMerge tag. It's not in the way at all, it conveys important information at a glance, and it's pretty. It's the same reasoning for the showing mergeable mods in green :shrug:

Thanks for the Laugh....I have to agree the Color helps to separate from the rest...also like in bold...it's Pretty. Such an important thing in a program! By the way Keep up the Good work this version gave no Problems here . Games still cruzin along at 3 hour sessions .

» Tue May 17, 2011 5:49 am

There appears to be a problem with BAIN in 283. I've dropped a couple of files into the Bash Installers folder and the installers tab is not registering that they've shown up there. Even a full data refresh did not fix this. This was working fine with 282.

Was this with Bash open, or did you restart?

I just dropped in a couple and restarted and they showed up fine.

edit: tested with WB open, new package showed up immediately, and was removed without issues.

» Tue May 17, 2011 9:44 am

I do not think the information conveyed by the purple is important at all. What do you do with the purple-marked mods? They do not show up in the bashed patch, so it is not as if you will accidentally check it there. Does someone have a convincing reason for the significance of this feature?

» Tue May 17, 2011 4:08 am

They DO show up in the Bashed Patch under the various import options. The information it conveys is "Hey, this should be imported into your Patch, but DON'T MERGE IT." Sure, you can just look at the box and see the NoMerge tag, but the exact same thing could be said about the mergeable mods showing up in green. It's just convenient.

» Tue May 17, 2011 11:23 am

If whoever makes this wrye bash ever looks at this thread, I'd like to say thank you for helping me to get oblivion running with my awful cluster[censored] of mods.

thank you!

» Tue May 17, 2011 12:13 pm

They do not show up in the MERGED section of the bashed patch. The purple signifies that they are tagged NoMerge. All mods tagged with import options show up in the various import sections. That has nothing to do with the NoMerge tag or the purple. The green says "you can deactivate me." That is not the same argument. The green conveys significant information that is not immediately obvious. No no one has given a convincing reason for the importance of the purple. The colors are supposed to help the users make installation configuration decision choices, and the purple, so far as I can tell, does not. Maybe I am misunderstanding the purpose of all of the coloring then...

"Hey, this should be imported into your Patch, but DON'T MERGE IT." <-- MOST users do not even miss the plugin in the merged section, so the purple is not helping them.

» Tue May 17, 2011 12:22 pm

They do not show up in the MERGED section of the bashed patch. The purple signifies that they are tagged NoMerge. All mods tagged with import options show up in the various import sections. That has nothing to do with the NoMerge tag or the purple. The green says "you can deactivate me." That is not the same argument. The green conveys significant information that is not immediately obvious. No no one has given a convincing reason for the importance of the purple. The colors are supposed to help the users make installation configuration decision choices, and the purple, so far as I can tell, does not. Maybe I am misunderstanding the purpose of all of the coloring then...

"Hey, this should be imported into your Patch, but DON'T MERGE IT." <-- MOST users do not even miss the plugin in the merged section, so the purple is not helping them.

It tells them to look for it under the import options. The purple doesn't signify that they're tagged NoMerge per se, but that they're tagged NoMerge and are otherwise mergeable (though, in almost all cases the two are indistinguishable). Purple means that I'm not merging it into my Bashed Patch, so I'd best look out to import its contents through another medium.

» Tue May 17, 2011 9:14 am

Really? Purple indicates a mod has import options? That is news to me. Can someone please tell me what the rules for purple are because I was sure that it only indicated a mod is tagged with NoMerge that is otherwise mergeable (hence the NoMerge tag...????)

» Tue May 17, 2011 8:32 am

It is a mod tagged with NoMerge that is otherwise mergeable. I know of absolutely zero situations where that means that the plugin should be activated. Every mod I've seen with the NoMerge tag is tagged as such because it's contents are imported, e.g. TNR, Cobl's filter, All Natural's filter, Item Interchange, etc.

» Tue May 17, 2011 7:41 am

That means that the purple implies that the content should be imported, but I highly doubt that the "import" tags are found in its rule set. Please, correct me if I am wrong, but I still have not been given a reason why the purple is necessary. NONE of the other colors tell you "go look me up under XX section." Users can see them in the bashed patch when they rebuild it. That is not what the purpose of the coloring is. The NoMerge tag makes sense. That has nothing to do with my concern. I am well aware of the significance of the NoMerge tag. As far as I know, the only mod you mentioned with purple text is the TNR mod. I do not know about Item Interchange, but I am sure you did not need the purple highlight to tell you Item Interchange imported content. Obviously, the filter plugins have imported content if they are not mergeable. There is still now answer to my question about the purple there.

» Tue May 17, 2011 12:24 pm

You're right, TNR is the only one that actually has the NoMerge tag of what I listed. The L.A.M.E. weapon shader plugin gets it, as does anything else with with Import Graphics alone, such as some Armamentarium plugins. Any plugin that isn't marked NoMerge by default, but that a user might not want to merge, such as loading screen mods with anything else that changes the loading screen text. I have my plugins from Trollf's Themed Replacer marked NoMerge so that OOO's changes to the text are preserved. And I like to know that just by looking at it. It's not necessary. It's nice, convenient, cool.

» Tue May 17, 2011 3:24 am

I don't think you're going to get the answer you want.

The NoMerge tag was created to deal with a specific situation. Where a mod was technically mergeable, but where merging was undesirable.

This fixed one major problem, but left the side effect of having mods that were marked green as mergeable, but were in fact not. This was further exasperated because Wrye Bash wouldn't tell you why it wasn't mergeable.

The purple text was a visual indicator that those mods were different from other mergeable mods. Purple instead of Green.

Since then, WB has been changed so that mods with NoMerge will now report that they can't be merged because of that tag. They might not even get the green text anymore because WB may now consider them unmergeable from the get-go. Can't tell because you can't see whether they would still have green text or if they would have black text now.

So the purple text may just be a leftover fix for a problem that no longer exists.

But, some people like the purple text. Others don't. Some find one way confusing, others find the other way confusing.

PacificMorrowind would have to decided which group of people to please.

Personally, I'd leave the purple text. I'd also try to figure out a more obvious way of telling the user what the colors and italics mean.

» Tue May 17, 2011 3:06 am

As I said in the other thread, only ONE of my 253 installed plugins has this tag, and it seriously took me a while to figure out what purpose it served. It does not help me deal with the plugin in anyway. I would prefer it was black, and so went unnoticed. How many users are really concerned with the details for why a certain mod is mergeable, anyway? Bash is a utility that automates a lot of the decision making, and the purple makes you want to do double-take.

» Tue May 17, 2011 8:53 am

...
Since then, WB has been changed so that mods with NoMerge will now report that they can't be merged because of that tag. They might not even get the green text anymore because WB may now consider them unmergeable from the get-go. Can't tell because you can't see whether they would still have green text or if they would have black text now.
...

For me, this is yet another reason for the purple text. I want those mods to be differentiated from regular mods. Because if I see black text, I want to activate it. In no case should a NoMerge mod be activated.

As I said in the other thread, only ONE of my 253 installed plugins has this tag, and it seriously took me a while to figure out what purpose it served. It does not help me deal with the plugin in anyway. I would prefer it was black, and so went unnoticed. How many users are really concerned with the details for why a certain mod is mergeable, anyway? Bash is a utility that automates a lot of the decision making, and the purple makes you want to do double-take.

I'm concerned with the details of why a certain mod is mergeable or not, and I'll bet that's a driving reason behind many of the people who like the colored text. I absolutely do NOT want the purple mods to go unnoticed for the reason I've stated above.

» Tue May 17, 2011 9:49 am

Then that means that you would rather they have the "deactivate" tag. Then then all NoMerge plugins with import-only content would be deactivated. That makes sense enough to me.

» Tue May 17, 2011 3:18 am

But purple is a lot more noticeable than the italics. And a lot prettier.

» Tue May 17, 2011 11:43 am

I agree that the purple is prettier, so switch the italics out for the purple and give all of those mods that require essentially the same action on part of the use the same visual distinction. I would not have been nearly as confused if I had 20 purple plugins in my load order all of a sudden and noticed they all had the deactivate tag.

» Tue May 17, 2011 3:48 pm

Here's the thing. Initially, we have two sets of mods:

Mergeable............and............Not mergeable

And, under Mergeable we have a subset of mods:

NoMerge

To make mods marked NoMerge the same in appearance as mods that aren't mergeable full stop is to disregard the fact that they WOULD be mergeable without the tag. I think that making it so that NoMerge was a reason for Bash to say that it's not mergeable was a mistake. There are logical groupings. NoMerge mods need to differentiated from other mergeable mods because they're different. Likewise, they need to be differentiated from mods that are altogether not mergeable. The easy way to do that is make it pretty and purple. I've got eleven mods that are purple. If they were black, I'd consider them the same as all the other black mods, which they aren't. The Deactivate tag is independent of all of that, since it can apply to either the Mergeable or Not mergeable sets. That's why it can't replace the NoMerge indicator. It all comes back to grouping the mods tagged with NoMerge in the Not mergeable set. They don't belong in that set.

» Tue May 17, 2011 4:38 am

I prefer the logical sets: activated, mergeable and import-only. With that grouping, mods tagged NoMerge fall into the category as "import-only." If you do not want users to think about the significance of what is required to be considered a merged mod, do not highlight the mod that could have been mergeable but is tagged not to be...for some reason... What do you do with purple highlighted mods other than deactivate them? Would you not do the same thing if they only had italics instead? really?

» Tue May 17, 2011 8:55 am

Who doesn't want users to think about the significance of what is required to be considered a merged mod? I always think about that, which is why I like the purple to be there. Italics indicate something different from the purple. I like to know both.

» Tue May 17, 2011 1:04 am

If you know the contents of a mod and you know what the bashed patch does, then the purple text is not important. How many people go comparing mods in TES4Edit to see what the difference is between the purple and the green plugins? Understanding the difference between a mergeable mod and a mergeable mod that has the NoMerge tag is not the the simplest concept to grasp for a mod user. If users are not confused by yet another color distinction, then I will leave it alone. I need to go update all of my BAIN installation docs for the new features now...

» Tue May 17, 2011 11:48 am

It shouldn't be any more confusing. Any user new to Bash isn't going to know what the green is either. He looks it up, finds out that that means it can be merged into the Bashed Patch. He also learns that purple is the same kind of mod, except that it shouldn't be merged into the Bashed Patch and has the NoMerge tag. Black lettering indicates that a mod just doesn't meet the criteria to be mergeable and italics mean that under no circumstances should the mod be active. There's going to be some overlap between these four sets, but it's incredibly simple. Maybe I'm overestimating Bash users, but I'd like to think that they're not that stupid :shrug:

» Tue May 17, 2011 1:31 pm

I have on many occasions seen a users load order, indicated that certain mods (green) could be deactivated, and had the user respond with O_O you can do that?? Now, I have to tell them to deactivate the green and purple and italics (regardless of the color) plugins...

Also, some mods tagged with NoMerge are black and not purple (i.e., the "Vwalk" plugins.) If NoMerge is the only qualification for purple, then those plugins should be purple too, or does deactivate (italics) stomp out purple. The mergeable mods with the deactivate tag are still green...