First of all I applaud all the people who have the ability to create assets and then make then available for everyone on the download station.
When the assets are placed on the download station I wish that they had names which gave a clue as to what the asset is.
One example, and I am not trying to pick on or criticize this asset creator, but it is a great example of my desire for the DLS title to reflect what the asset is for.
On the download station for 8/21/2013 there were 991 assets available for downloading all with the name 'Reserved'. They were made available by krash_01. These may be wonderful and useful assets, however neither the name or the thumbnail picture gave a clue as to what they were or no idea on how they might fit into a route.
Am I missing something here?
Long ago I was what's known as a Configuration Manager in an organisation producing very large software installations running on mainframes. Part of the job was to devise and enforce naming standards for the many, many different types and items of software modules.
Without these naming standards it was impossible to keep track of the rascals, not to mention their various versions and all the calls from one to another. Failure to name an item according to the standards often resulted in a bout of chaos and mad chasing about, as an errant & hard-to-find module caused glitches here, there & everywhere.
So the free-for-all naming that occurs with Trainz items often makes me go "tut" since it's often unclear what a thing is; or difficult to find various types of things - all because the naming standards are rather lax.
But, given that the source of Trainz items is so diverse - thousands of contributors - the Trainz database is remarkably usable. Items must at least be allocated to meaningful types & versions; and names are usually meaningful in themselves (the name describes what the item is). Sometimes this is not the case and finding or understanding items of various kinds gets difficult.
For example, Pofig's trees - very splendid and useful items - have obscure names that don't describe what each tree is. Each name is a string of characters very similar to the strings of characters naming all the other items, so any meaning Pofig might have intended with the naming scheme is not self-evident to the uninitiated.
Often the associated jpeg that pictures an item is a generic jpeg that doesn't portray the individual "thing". Sometimes there is no jpeg at all - or a message saying words to the effect that "this is a generic filler".
Data items in a large database of related and interacting "stuff" need managing. Trainz data items could be managed a lot better than they are and much of that improvement could be achieved via more rigorous naming standards. But it's probably too late now.
On the other hand, they could all be given an alias which
did accord with a rigorous naming standard. But where would that standard come from and who would enforce the production of all the aliases?
