Morrowind's Abysmal Filenames and Folders

[noahsummers]

For my own convenience as a modder, I've recently started sorting through a copy of Morrowind's mesh data folder to organize all the models by type (armor type, item type, architecture type, etc.), and I've learned that there are essentially no standard naming conventions (there are usually several different abbreviations/acronyms for each designation, and often the hierarchy is not followed) or even organizational conventions (there are interior cells in the exterior folder and vice versa, for one example).

So my question is, is it even feasible to incorporate a data file cleanup into the OpenMW installation process? The only problem I can think of is that old mods would still depend on the original file system, but as long as legacy mods were put through the same "batch rename/reorganize" process upon import, everything should continue to function. Or maybe we could just say "screw it", implement the new structure, and leave users to bring old mods up to standard.

The reason I ask is not because I want somebody to do all the work for me, but because if it is feasible from a coding/practicality standpoint, I would love to work on the reorganization myself.

Is this a dumb idea?

[Capostrophic]

I thought about this myself. The problem was because the game had limit on file paths length and could occasionally pick up the old filename from the old file path. Not sure about the first problem, but the second is definitely present.
But shaking up the files with OpenMW itself would produce compatibility problems and for sure be optional and off by default. And it would just make dehardcoding harder.
I think there should be three scripts -- first will sort files and crop their filenames, second will make a patch making readable file paths (to meshes and to textures in case of landscape textures) in plugins themselves and third shaking up the nif files. The first should be easy to code, the rest, though...

[Passerine]

I could see a symbolic link/game resource lookup redirect setup solving that compatibility problem.