Embedding Symbol Data Within Drawings
My understanding is that when you apply a texture or symbol, only the name and path of the element is stored in the document, but not the actually image data. Thus, when you give your .fcw file to someone who doesn't have the same textures/symbols, in the same relative location, they get red X's instead. For instance, if I use CSUAC symbols and they don't have them installed.
Is there a setting or command that will cause all the image data to be stored within the drawing file?
Is there a setting or command that will cause all the image data to be stored within the drawing file?
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
But... I might be completely wrong on all counts
As to the redistribution issue, we are already doing that. Anyone can take a screen shot of a map containing CSUAC symbols and obtain them that way. fortunately, in our community, people are generally honest and don't go out of their way to obtain symbols that way. Not to mention that they can simply download the CSUAC anyway.
I just use CSUAC as an example. I'm hoping that the ability to store resource data exists in general. I have a great many public domain symbols that the recipient of a map file may not have. I'd like to be able to share maps, not just exported images, with folks who don't have all those resources installed (my dnd group for instance).
This might sound like I'm splitting hairs, but I'm not. It was once explained to me that showing a screen shot of a symbol either in a map or in its folder to demonstrate a specific point is ok, but uploading the pngs is not. So I'm just extending that logically to suggest that it might be wrong to effectively send people the original pngs of a symbol set that belong to an annual, or a symbol set that the other person hasn't already purchased for themselves.
This is just conjecture, though - my thoughts, and nothing more
I do not work for nor speak for the company, and these are just my own assumptions, and possibly totally incorrect. I'm sure Remy or Ralf or Joe will be along soon enough to make a proper, company-based answer.
Maybe that's why its designed the way it is - to prevent total chaos and confusion about just exactly where 'Lamp post 99' was originally supposed to be stored, and where it came from - what the rights are, etc...
@Others: Calm down. We all know what the CSUAC is. No one ever said that it is public domain, nor that it should be distributed beyond those authorized to do so. This process would NOT transfer symbols from one person to another. It would simply embed the symbol data into the drawing in order to prevent red Xs when the recipient views the .fcw file. This is really no different from just using symbols as we all do currently. Again, no symbols would ever be transferred.
It's a moot point now, since the capability does not exist.
By embedding symbol data within the drawing, the related symbol (i.e. the link) would retrieve symbol data from a location within the drawing, inaccessible to users, instead of the external source. The symbol data is NOT the same thing as the symbol. As you say, you can copy, move, duplicate, and export the symbol. But remember that any symbol within a drawing contains no data; it is merely a link to data. Without that data, the related symbol will only result in a red X. There is no similar command to move, copy, duplicate, export, or in any other way access the symbol data (were it to be added) so no redistribution of symbols would be possible.
It would take a more extensive rewrite than to just embed the image in the save file.
(It also does raise legal questions, because a lot of symbol collections, including CSUAC, allow you to distribute finished products, but not individual symbols as part of a collection. Whether or not this would constitute that is going to depend on who you ask, but I don't image Profantasy is interested in finding out. Plus, of course, anyone who has provided their artwork for use with CC has done so with a pretty explicit understanding that it won't work the way you want, and many would not appreciate an arbitrary change.)
Embedding all the image data would make the .fcw huge though, just my basic overland tutorial map from the manual relies on 65MB of resources on disk, and that is a very simple map. You can check how much your map uses by running the IMAGENAMESDWG command on it to get a listing for exactly what it relies on, and the total size.
This was copied from the CC3 map I'm working on right now, and pasted directly in GIMP. I had to reduce the size of the file by 50% to upload it, since the copied house was copied (and pasted) at full VH resolution - which would have made erasing the white background amazingly easy. I defaced the symbol, since uploading images like this makes me feel uncomfortable. Its not really ok by my own principles, but it fully demonstrates the problem with embedding graphics.
They are just waaaaay too easy to... er... 'borrow' :P
This is purely a hypothetical discussion now, since we know it can't be done anyway, but if symbols were embedded in the CC3 file, would it be possible to copy and paste them into GIMP in just the same way that I did with the house above?
(And let us not forget that the code for displaying images and the code for copying something are two completely different parts of the program, so to do prevent copying of certain elements, you would probably need a deep change to the program, this is probably NOT some easy fix, although Joe knows far more of the source code than I do, so he is the best one to give a definitive answer to that part)
I was thinking that it would be a seriously bad idea to ever create a facility to embed images in CC3 maps - if anything like that was ever in PF's collective mind
In the good old days of CC2, with only vector symbols, symbols where always completely embedded in the map. If I made a map in DD2 and sent it to someone with only CC2, they could still see the map just fine.
I think the only bad thing about the embedding idea is the size of the maps it would generate. I have many maps that uses over 500MB in resources.
And even if it copied only the reference, when you save the second drawing, it would save the image in that save file, too. The only alternative is to remove the ability to copy from one instance of CC to another, which would annoy the hell out of a lot of people (and invalidate a lot of tutorials).
And you can still take symbols from an open drawing and turn them into a symbol catalog of your very own. That, too, would have to be removed, again requiring a lot of work. And even more if it has to tell the difference between embedded symbols and those saved only as references.
Now take a look at Loopysue's post up above on copying a symbol from CC and pasting it into a completely different program. That did not copy a reference to the file location, it copied the entire image.
All that is aside from the legal issues.
What you want isn't going to happen, for good reasons. Get over it.
The original question have been thoroughly answered, so I am closing this thread.