Case Sensitivity

[lgromanowski]

We were talking about case sensitivity for cell names before, but there is another issue related to case sensitivity.

When using Morrowind (EDIT: with WINE) on linux, it can be helpful to convert your entire Morrowind directory to lowercase, to avoid mod conflicts.

However, when you try to start OpenMW with Morrowind.esm (and maybe Morrowind.bsa or other files) as lowercase, it will fail.

Now, I know that currently you have hardcoded it to explicitly call Morrowind.esm, and in the future you might make it more dynamic.

However, this is just a reminder that case sensitivity is an issue for ESMs as well, and could be a potential cause of future headaches.

When using linux, it is helpful to convert your entire Morrowind directory to lowercase, to avoid conflicts.

A big NO! That is not helpful at all. You should never need to convert your MW data directory to lowercase to make it work with OpenMW.

The case problem is a known issue (actually issue #5). It has been already taken care of for sound files and the other resources file types will hopefully be taken care of soon too.

However, when you try to start OpenMW with Morrowind.esm (and maybe Morrowind.bsa or other files) as lowercase, it will fail.

That's how it is supposed to be. Linux after all has a case-sensitive file system.

Now, I know that currently you have hardcoded it to explicitly call Morrowind.esm, and in the future you might make it more dynamic.

The file Morrowind.esm is not really hardcoded. This file name is the default value, but you can change it with the --master option.

However, this is just a reminder that case sensitivity is an issue for ESMs as well, and could be a potential cause of future headaches.

I do not see where there would be possible headaches.

I didn't mean it is helpful for OpenMW.

I should have said, when using WINE it is helpful to convert your morrowind directory if you are installing a lot of mods (like me). There are even ways around that, such as using 7zip in WINE to uzip all mod data, but I wasn't aware of that at the time.

I don't want to have to re-install anything, or even spend time renaming things, simply to play OpenMW. Plus, I like all my texture mods. They work just fine in OpenMW

As for headaches, I am just referring to any users who have non-standard names for their ESMs.

The reason why someone might have an improperly named or capitalized filename is not that important if the issue can be eliminated easily. If it isn't so easy, then clearly it wouldn't be worth it.

Some people like merging their mods together to avoid clutter, conflicts, or whatever. That could certainly be one way that issue could come up.

I am interested in why the system cannot just treat all ESMs equally. Why must it know which one is Morrowind.esm? Is this just temporary? If so, then that is how the issue will be eliminated.

We have a default value, so OpenMW knows what to load, when no explicit esm file is given (neither on the command line nor in the config file). I don't see this as a temporary solution, since Morrowind.esm is kinda the default.

Though if a filename lookup table is already being created so the engine can find on-disk resources in a case-insensitive manner (since even Morrowind.esm specifies resource names with casing that differs from the actual filename), can't the same case-insensitive lookup table be used to find Morrowind.esm (and Tribunal.esm and Bloodmoon.esm)?

It wouldn't be much of a problem, but I don't see why we should do that. Linux is case-sensitive. We shouldn't force case-insensitivity on it, unless it is absolutely needed.

Eventually we are going to have something like Morrowind's Splash screen that allows you to select which ESM/ESPs to load, right?

If so, perhaps at that point we could begin to treat all ESM/ESPs equally. As long as you do a check to make sure that at least one of the files is selected, then it should always have something to load.

Eventually we are going to have something like Morrowind's Splash screen that allows you to select which ESM/ESPs to load, right?

IIRC the MW launcher has a button, that opens a dialogue window, which lets you change the master/plugin settings in the config file (or the ini file in this case). So that would be exactly what we have now, just with a GUI front end (which we too should add at some point).

Sorry, but I don't get your point. We are treating all esm/esp equally.

I think the case insensitivity / file finder can have a place here too, in finding the original esm/bsa files on the first run. After all, people may have renamed their files already for wine, or have weird cases for other reasons. But this isn't an important feature, just a convenience.

After the first run though, there's no point in automatically checking other cases, since the user will always select the files manually. It should be allowed to eg. use both myfile.esp and MyFile.esp at the same time on Linux, if you want to.