I don't see this as a conspiracy on N3V developer's part. This is more like overworked developers trying to come up with new products, patches, and support the product at the same time. I know because I worked in a company about the size of N3V for about 10 years. The code writers and hardware engineers not only worked on the product, they also provided support and wrote the documentation. The latter item wasn't exactly the best part of the package and eventually the company hired a copywriter firm to create the end-user documentation. The other thing too is these people are programmers. Programmers live in their own world. They create their programs, know them inside and out, where the bugs are, and what tweaks they can do to make things better. What programmers do no do is communicate. It's a rare thing to have a computer scientist that communicates superbly both in writing and verbally and can write programmers. If they have these skills, they generally move on out of that role into something else. Seriously, not to stereotype, but again because I've worked in the industry for close to 35 years. Don't get me wrong. A lot of these people have a great sense of humor and are really, really brilliant and creative, but they live in their own world usually with molding coffee cups and empty chip bags all over the place.
What we've seen with Auran and now N3V is a transition and survival. They lost their big support staff and copywriter when Fury melted everything down. N3V is the Phoenix that has risen from the ashes and is still picking up the pieces from what is left. They really are trying to get things in the right direction, but with limited resources still we are facing the bits and pieces instead of the whole package. Perhaps their Kick Starter will be the knight in shining armor for us and give us a newer and better product and company to support us and the products.
Now regarding the content. Ben. You make and have made some of the best content on the DLS. I think I have downloaded everything you have made. Martin, you too, and so has Malc has as well. Kudos for this this I extend my thanks to so have many, many other creators as well. Believe me I am a very discerning downloader, and pick my content carefully. Yes, I did make one item and a couple of routes, not counting the Sketch-up stuff I uploaded, and this doesn't do justice to what's been uploaded. I feel your pain and frustrations when you are forced to repair things because the details weren't documented.
Now, this brings up another point, which I've been discussing quite often offline, and I mean on the phone or in person, with another Trainzer. He and I feel that the upload or perhaps the download system, or maybe even Content Manager its self could be setup to automatically parse and repair the simplest errors instead of flagging them for repair. The simple config.txt file repairs, such as incorrect tags, spelling errors, non-binary values for binary tags, could be auto-applied to the asset. We may have to commit the asset(s) afterwards if this is done on the download end, but the errors could be repaired automatically.
The other thought we had is content version deprecation. Instead of trying to update older content to a new version, leave the old stuff as is and ignore the non-fatal errors in them. By non-fatal I mean those that will not cause performance issues or crashing. What could or would happen in this case is the asset would be scanned on download and installation. If it is, for example, an asset less than 2.9, it would receive a scan for errors. If any non-fatal or performance-causing errors are not found, then a tag is added to the config.txt marking it as old but okay to use. A warning or message could be present like is already stating that the version is old and the asset should be upgraded. This process sort of works now but not to the extent I am trying to explain here. By doing this, it will help by removing from the repair process the shear number of older assets that we still have on the DLS. Those that definitely need repairing should be flagged by N3V and then repaired by either their staff or the community. This is where an online scanner on their server would do the job.
John
