Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 2:16 pm

Can we have a way to "archive" a package we've uploaded to the library so that it doesn't show up any more, unless someone does a detailed search for it or checks a "show archives" link or similar? would help reduce the clutter a little as more and more people start using the library

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 4:14 pm

Why would you want to? Either a package is useful, and you'll want it to show on people's searches (because they'll probably search for their specific MUD, which'll return a limited number of packages), or it's not useful and you should delete it from the library. You should be able to delete your own packages, though I remember someone having a problem with it.

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

You can delete your own packages. I did have some problems when I first posted my package on there though...

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

Would be nice to be able to hide packages though.
Checking now there are around 80-90 packages uploaded. Of those there are maybe half a dozen I'm interested in.
At the moment I don't bother looking through the list because I know I don't want most of them and I've no way to hide the ones I wouldn't use.
Would also be nice to be able to filter by new/updated packages within the last week or month.

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

Well, you can already filter them by creator or mud and a few more.

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

Not enough imho, I think semi-permanently hiding individual items in a list of (eventually) 100's is a pretty standard feature. In a year's time when the package library has taken off a bit more and we have 500 packages instead of 100 then I'd hate to have to go through a routine of applying certain filters for each mud I play or for each person that might have previously produced a package that looked interesting etc.
Better to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:06 am

There just isn't any good way to do this. It's just like looking through the list of plugins/extensions for Firefox. There are hundreds of them and there isn't any way to "hide" items in that list either. You need to rely upon the existing features that allow you to filter based upon the MUD that you want, or the Category that you want. You can click on any column to sort the list, so you can sort it by Rating, or Download count, for example. As more packages get posted and more people learn how to comment on packages and rate them, then the rating system should help you find the most useful packages.

But just filtering on the MUD should be good enough for a long time. There are not that many packages for specific MUDs. In the future I'll try to save your filter settings so that you don't have to apply them all the time.

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:14 am

The original question related to developers hiding packages and nobody was disagreeing with your idea that users should be able to hide them. That seems useful to me - developers doing the hiding doesn't.

EDIT: Argh, beaten.

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:18 am

I just know i wrote a few things way back when cmud first came out that i would now consider obsolete. Perhaps that would be a better flag for the packages, "obsolete", so you can filter by packages that the developers haven't marked as obsolete. I understand you dont want them DELETED, but they should be able to be marked as having been supersceded by a different package

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:41 am

If you created the package, then you should log into the package library and edit your package and either delete it, or set the new Version Min and Version Max properties so that it is obvious that the packages were written for an older version of CMUD. Once I have the MyMuds.com site set up, it will have a way for Developer's to manage all of their packages from the web server if you have the appropriate Developer subscription for MyMuds. That will make it easier to edit the properties for a lot of different packages rather than editing each one-by-one via the CMUD Package Library Edit screen.

You could also put a note in the WhatsNew field for the old packages to indicate the name of the new package that superceeds them...assuming the bug with the WhatsNew field was fixed...I'm not sure if it was yet or not.

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:47 am

Hmm, i wasn't aware that i could actually delete my package, i didn't want to download it because i knew it was obsolete >:) Though personally, i'm still going to have to argue, "isArchived" or "isObsoleted" or even "isDeleted" flag would be better than actually removing it, or would be a nice alternative aswell, cos sure, you might not use the package any more, but you never know how many others might WANT to use the obsolete code. At least that way, they wouldn't have to make local backups of all the packages they use, as they would ALWAYS be available in the library, but i guess now i'm approaching on the versioning topic, which i've seen mentioned here and there anyways.

Sorcerer Joined: 13 Jan 2006 Posts: 715

@Zugg if you do implement saving of filtering, then you can add a right click menu option to "Hide" an item (like Windows Vista Update does) and save that into the filter settings DB. Then when a list is loaded, it checks it against all filters including the "Hide" one.

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 5:38 pm

When you delete a package, it is actually just marked with a "Deleted" flag on the server and not actually deleted. Otherwise when another user requests an update to their library list, there would be no way to determine what has been deleted since the last update. And it will never delete anything from someone else's disk. If they have installed a package from the library, the *.PKG file remains on their disk even if the package disappears from the library.