This is the wrong place for discussions of politics, intellectual property law, and other ideology. I'm going to inspect the code that defines filter functions of this mod and ESO's mod API and see if I can derive one to add the extra function I want. Whether that turns into a collaboration or not is entirely up to others. My ego doesn't rule me and my self-interest is quite enlightened. I don't need my name on a damned thing and I expect nothing. Doing a thing because it needs doing is all that matters. It's continually frustrating that others don't see the wisdom in it.

I get what you are saying in principle. I think the main issue is in the delivery.

However, I also detect a possibly skewed perception here of the nature of modding and the intellectual work of mod programmers in general. Specifically, your statements here appear to suggest you honestly believe that the convenient availability of mods is more important than the rights and considerations of the authors who actually make them, which I find to be a fundamentally flawed way of thinking:


I mean I get they are important to people using them. But think about it. What if someone were to say "I really like the Rolling Stones, and I think great music should continue to be performed even after the artists are too old or no longer interested, egos (and artist's rights) be damned!"

This would clearly be flawed thinking, and United States copyright law flatly disagrees with such an opinion. If you were to simply take another person's work, whether it be words or brush strokes or music or code, and reproduce it without permission, you would be in violation of the law. Furthermore, it is the artists prerogative whether to grant LICENSE to perform or use their work and how. This is what royalties are all about in music, and for code their are all sorts of variations (GNU licence, MIT licence, CC, etc.).

Just because someone publishes something on the internet does NOT imply they have done so under the "anyone can take it" license. It is also not realistic to say that just because you have enjoyed something for free in the past that you are somehow OWED that thing for free in perpetuity, considerations of the people actually sharing it be damned.

Even the long touted golden parachute of pirates and plagiarists (and sociopathic corporate criminals), the so-called "derivative works" blanket, has some fairly absolute criteria for admissibility in court. Specifically, said derivative work must introduce a "substantial amount of new material" in order to be considered legitimate use, which is virtually impossible in software as most courts have recognized code design as analogous to engineering schematics and that "unique way of doing things" has to be shown to have been changed substantially, which most pirates simply don't have the skill or interest to bother doing, else they would simply have done it themselves in the first place instead of trying to rip people off for it and CYA after the fact.

I believe fundamentally in the rights of artists FIRST, before any consideration of the demands of mere CONSUMERS who in the case of mods contribute VIRTUALLY NOTHING to the process (save the extreme minority who donate a couple bucks here and there) since there is no financial transaction involved, and yet too often express this profound and baseless sense of ENTITLEMENT which is an unhealthy and self-centrist detachment from reality based in a lack of underlying empathy or capacity (for whatever reason) to see the content creators as actual people with an actual interest in their own work (more than any claim the consumer thinks he has).

Mods can be used on a resume, for one example. But if an employer sees that someone came along later and changed the API version or something and put their name on it, they're going to say "oh, so this was a collaboration, so how much was actually THEIR skill and how much the other guy's?" How deeply they dig into version history and code comments to actually find out is anyone's guess but I promise, it is not in the artist's interest, particularly in this economy where ANYTHING on a resume to give you an edge is almost necessary, to let someone tweak a couple of lines in your song and claim joint credit.

There is also the fact that people are not exactly chomping at the bit to take over mod projects here. I mean if someone showed the INCENTIVE and actually produced a working update to some core issue then sure. Or even if they were just asking questions, showing they were trying to learn, offering to do some busy work part of the project, whatever. But without that effort, without the actual code, it would really just be a lot of talk about how they COULD do this and WOULD do that if they just got their name on it FIRST, which even then isn't something I have personally encountered much.

I get it, mods are convenient. But just because you like something doesn't mean you are OWED that thing. This isn't some fruity form of artistic communism where if I like your material I can just rip it off and do as I please with no consequences. This is a civilized society with rules and LAWS which recognize the need to protect artist's rights in order to INCENTIVIZE PRODUCTION.

Otherwise all we would be left with is a bunch of rip-off artists with limited skills with nothing to rip off, because the artists figured screw it, why put out the effort when it only goes to benefit some immortal corporate criminal who can steal it and turn a profit at my expense? I think not, and therein lies the crux or our stagnant modern intellectual property economy:

Too much greedy corporate manhandling, NOT ENOUGH INVESTMENT IN PEOPLE.

What is well done was anticipating user changes to the default bank rules and inheriting the current rules rather than the defaults. Can you perhaps now see what you can do about adding another filter function that returns the character's level? I would like to use that in the Low Level category conditions.

The "positive feedback" he offered was a smokescreen for derision and sarcasm. I "bit back" because his comment wasn't actually intended to be helpful. Even crafty35a saw the sarcasm and applauded it with "well said". Is that sarcasm supposed to inspire me to make an effort? No, it's intended to silence me.

I would be happy to contribute in whatever fashion that is possible, but I am not inspired by the salty responses. It's likely that I've been tweaking games, using mods, and altering mods longer than you've even been gaming. I have skills, but they are limited. As Dirty Harry said, "a man's got to know his limitations", and I know mine. I am blunt and tactless and have high expectations of myself and others. I don't "know" LUA (or any language at this point) inside-and-out, but I can analyze and modify others' code. Follow-through is not my strong suit, I have ADD and chase butterflies, but I can sometimes see the big picture where others don't and sweat details when others won't. I suggest collaboration precisely because I know my own limitations and know that others have them, too. Mods should never die just because of one person's limitations; the mod matters more than the individual(s) who creates it, egos be damned.

I'm honestly not sure what you are proposing. You want a "collaborative" effort but when a seasoned dev gives you positive feedback and suggests you visit the sites where most of the ESO devs hang out and work on the idea with them, you bite back snarling about lone wolf syndrome?

It sounds to me you weren't so much suggesting a collaboration as you were just having a pseudo-intellectual winge at other people for not having done the work for you. Might I suggest (when you have nothing to contribute) either keeping your mouth shut, or otherwise if you are truthfully just looking for a clever way to demand others do something you want for you, perhaps adopt a more enlightened tact?

I find that when one wants something from others, asking nicely can go a long way. It helps to train yourself to think of others as actual human beings no more or less valuable and certainly no less real than yourself. Even if empathy doesn't come naturally, you can train yourself to overcome that limitation through a simple benefit and loss analysis:

"When I treat others like they owe me something, are beneath me, or otherwise aren't really people but just objects that exist to serve me, I tend not to get what I want. When I treat people with respect (again you will have to practice in order to build up empirical evidence for this) I am more likely to inspire them to devote time and effort from their personal life, often for no financial gain whatsoever, to help me to achieve it."

I think this was covered somewhere in "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

You just can't get your head out of the lone wolf's ass, can you? You sarcastically proposed exactly the opposite of the collaborative effort I described. This lone-wolf syndrome is also how and why so many mods get relegated to the Discontinued bin. Have fun with perpetuating that stupidity. You and others don't seem to know how to do anything else, apparently.

Well said.

Anyways, home storage is now fully supported in Auto Category. v1.22 uploaded last night now allows custom settings for your home storage chests.

Wise words. You seem to have the time and will to support this, so go on and build it or make a concept on base of the esoui source code.
I'm very interested in your solution. Visit the gitter esoui channel and talk to the devs. Maybe your idea can become reality. Maybe you are going to support and update it then in the future years.

This and other mods need to properly catch up with the addition of home chests. I see the "support" for home chests is still a kludge that treats them as indistinct from AC_BAG_TYPE_BANK. That's not support for them.

What's needed is a mod to formalize how virtual game storage is handled in all mods: LibStorage. The community should recognize a common shared problem and collaborate on a shared solution, not everyone going off in the corner to invent their own solutions.

Thanks, rockingdice! I just uploaded a new version that supports home storage, everyone please let me know if you experience any major issues.

EDIT: Nevermind what I originally said here. I am now maintaining Auto Category, and the home storage patch is integrated here in the original add-on.

That is not currently possible, nor will it likely ever be, given that the author now appears to be AWOL.

Hey guys, could anyone guide me how to go about building an API to filter items crafted by a specific toon.

Up!

I have just downloaded Auto Category and I love it!

I have immediately noticed the lack of integration for Set Tracker.

To my understanding, the creator of this addon seems to have abandoned it, hasn't he?

I e-mailed him March 6th about a completely separate issue (category filter customization) and he still hasn't responded. A private message has also gone unanswered. I am not hopeful.

It's sad that so many people author game mods with so little consideration for how those mods might continue to be viable once they lose personal interest in them. It's fortunate luck that this one continues to work at all even within its original bounds. I would certainly also like to see it work with the new storage chests, but I think it's likely that we'll have to mod the mod ourselves. I hadn't yet worked up the gumption to look at the code and see if what was required is within my very limited skill set, so if someone else already knows what is required I'd like to hear the process.

Regarding what I did mail him about: the "Low Level" gear filter wasn't useful to me, because I've just started playing the game in February and all I had were characters below level 50, and the default filter for it only considers Champion Points. I modified the filter to also test "level() < n", but n was hard-coded and so meant that I had to modify the filter manually every time my character increased in level... and it became effectively useless once I had other characters at different levels (since the mod is account-wide). I asked him if there was an API call to reference the character level and make the test dynamic. Does anyone here know if there's a way to fix the shortcoming in this "Low Level" category?

Addendum: I just saw the patch submitted by raj72616a, but there's a problem: even though his published page for the patch states that it's based off the latest version 1.19 of AutoCategory, it's not: internally in the AutoCategory.txt file it reveals that he modified the previous version, 1.18, and further evidence exists in the date-time stamps of some of the files; 1.19 has some files dated 2017-10-29, while none of the unmodified files in the patch do, all are dated 2017-10-28. Inspecting the files in WinMerge further reveals missing code in the patch that exists in the original 1.19 files. Also, the "patch" isn't a patch at all: it's a full replacement containing all the other original files.

The patch-that-ain't-a-patch was carelessly derived from an obsolete version that is missing useful features, like saving the category collapse status. Do not use the "patch" until it's been correctly derived from the most recent version 1.19 of AutoCategory. The version number of the "patch" also needs to be incremented in some fashion in AutoCategory.txt and AutoCategory_Global.lua, so that it doesn't play havoc with Minion or whatever system people use to keep mods updated.