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V11 Name Change


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We've been using Minicad/Vectorworks for more than the 11 years I've been here and so we have lots of old drawings made with previous revisions of Vectorworks. We've had many problems opening old drawings with V11. It seems to me that the only reason you did this is to obsolete your old software. I don't agree with this policy however I don't dispute your right to do so. My problem is with the code that creates a "new name" for an older drawing opened with V11. For some reason some of the characters at the end of the name were omitted. I just noticed this today so I have no idea how long it's been doing this. You either did this intentionally or not. If it's unintentional then consider this a bug report. If it's intentional then please consider this the harshest possible criticism of this practice. I hope and will assume this is a bug because I don't like thinking anybody there would intentionally be this stupid. Please let me know how this pans out. Thanks.

[ 07-27-2005, 04:46 PM: Message edited by: RAM ]

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Example?

We recently did a conversion to 11 also, if the file length (or containing folder) is more then 31 characters long it will crop it down and add some hex numbers to the end after a # symbol, If you're simply opening them one at a time manually it might be removing some of the characters to insert the v11 at the end.

I totally agree with you this is HIGHLY annoying especially when OS X supports more then 31 character length it should be able to save with more then 31 characters.

As for the fix, I have been told the next version 12 or whatever will be able to save with the 'correct' number of characters in the filename.

The reason they don't support large file names is because of the backwards compatibility with OS 9, sure don't allow it to save with long filenames because it may cause problems for people on OS9 but conversions should recognise that the filename is already long and therefore agree with itself that it should re-save with the long filename (or at least have a utility to do so for OS X only users).

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Agreed. Although the name truncation protocol began long before Minicad was on the scene. Recall DOS 8 characters. So programmers just got lazy... like with the Y2K debacle. Nevertheless, since we now can address Long Filenames and FilePaths it makes little sense to obliterate existing Filenames merely to designate the version of an opening app. UNIX/OSX has numerous protocols for preserving the FileName and permissions associated with it. Truncation should NEVER be routinely applied.

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The last I remember was when we were told file names could be 255 characters. That was many years ago and in my mind never changed. It's beyond comprehension that a programmer would allow this to happen and to compound it they don't even open a dialog box to tell you it's happening. BTW, we are running WinXP Pro machines rather than Macs. I'm even more surprised this happens on Macs.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

RAM, EJ and malice,

The 31 character limit on the Mac has been addressed for a future version of VW. I made a file in VW 10 on Windows with a name that was about 63 characters long, and when I opened it in VW 11.5 on Windows, I saw some truncation. RAM, do you have a lot of files with such long names?

Thanks,

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Bruce, no we don't have many names that long or I probably would have noticed it before now. i don't consider that relevant to this issue though, since the VW programmers must know that sooner or later SOMEBODY will need a 32nd character and it's their responsibility to let that person know about the limitation. They certainly don't list this sort of thing in their advertising when they announce a new version so how are we to learn of it except to stumble upon it. BTW, I forwarded a copy of my original post in this thread to the moderator of the board and I must say that his lack of response/participation speaks volumes to their attitude. We've been using their software for many years and in fact were a beta site for the first Windows version. I've reported many bugs and requested many improvements and can say that I don't remember any of them actually being addressed in a timely manner. They are certainly not bashful about asking us to pay for upgrades though. I have told them point blank that I would not upgrade again until the bugs I reported years ago got fixed. I realize that all software has it's good & bad attributes but over the years Vectorworks support system has been very callous, IMHO.

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