Any way to restore Symbol Catalog Settings without reinstalling CC3+?
I messed up some things after, being the newbie I am, groping around the settings trying to get to grips to it.
And CC3+ popping up with the extremely unhelpful query of "save settings?" and not telling me what they did.
(Edit: To clarify this...I figured it was asking me about master filter stuff and search filtering etc)
Over several of these queries which I usually chose no for, but then chose yes, and still didn't know what happened, I slowly started to realize what they do.
I have also now realized that there are "prev.xml" backups of the original, but some of these, due to more experimentation got overwritten with the wrong settings becuause I saved those multiple times.
So, any way to get those back without reinstalling?
The answer is no, correct? It's no.
I am feeling much anger at the outcome of this.
To the developers of this software:
An unrelated query to you:
Yes or No?
Just choose yes or no, I'm not telling you what your choice does. But please choose anyway.
Oh, and in the blogposts I read inbetween, about styles and catalogues.
Like
or
It is suggested to pick "No" when it asks to save settings.
But it's not explained what happens if you do save them.
Why must you be such time and energy vampires needlessly, you bloody...
P.S.:
I just noticed that the most destructive option of this dialog, the path to the file, has a save button up top.
But, even after pressing it to update the changes (and the symbols do update properly) , and then clicking okay, it still asks "save settings?"
Dreadful.
Apply yourselves, please.
This is paid proprietary software, which I parted legal tender with for.
Especially with putting fluff like "we're friendly people" in the posting guidelines.
Friendly people don't do UX trolling. Trolls do UX trolling.
Comments
I have reinstalled CC3+, and for the time being I'll create some godforsaken git repos in the settings folders so I can roll them back, as well as see the changes this trollsoftware makes on its whims and fancies.
That should work fine. Make sure that you include the System subdirectory of the CC3+ data directory, as this is where all the settings for the symbol catalog settings, master filters and drawing tools are stored.
Note that symbol catalog settings can also usually be fixed manually quite quickly unless you have a lot of them with problems. The most common issue is the file name of the actual catalog being removed from the setting, but the name of the setting itself should be enough to identify which catalog it needs, so you can browse to it and then save the catalog.
I just slapped a git repo on the entire thing, which was rather easy since I use Linux.
Which probably explains this weird "save settings" jumping the gun bug I keep on getting, the moment I'm trying to deal with choosing some button in some mode, that then wants to list symbols with its little search patterns, but that are not part of the currently selected master filter.
Reproducability:
(For example one master filter that has Geomorphs, and one that does not)
In both cases, CC3+ will then show this:
And then, either I do some finicky ritual I have not yet sussed out, and it recovers for a moment, or I get an immediate crash, usually on cancel.
When this ChkData thing pops up, then the command line usually has a hanging filter, and I can sometimes prevent the crash for the moment by escaping out of it and issuing this SELBYD command, but, the UI element still is there, it seems.
Anyway, there are workarounds, for example:
If the is an empty list because the current master filter does not have the ability to satisfy a button query, closing the settings dialog and going to the master filter instead, either disabling it momentarily or choosing one that is sure to satisfy it.
It also sometimes seems that not rendering the icons of the symbols can prevent this bug as well.
And the most obvious workaround is manually loading a symbol catalog, of course.
Anyway, I don't think that this happens on windows, at least not in the virtual machine I tried.
I'd love to debug this, but ...proprietary software :P
I just noticed that this also happens on Windows, it just doesn't crash.
I can only assume that that is the source for your "The worst that happens is making the catalogue empty" thing you touched on.
Aka, my issue, too. Only for me the dialogs don't get cleaned up properly (tried mfc, dotnet, vcruntime, no avail)
But the "save settings" premature displayculation still happens on windows, as well.
Sad...
Any hanging macro, type selbyd <enter>
That will close the macro so you can continue with something else.
Yeah, that seems to work in this case sometimes.
But I'd rather see the developers type a fix for this into their software, instead.
And at least a partial UI overhaul that results in ONE unified dialog that sets all current style and catalog choices, instead of being spread around everywhere, but connected in the way they work.
Like how house styles are set somewhere, drawing tool styles somewhere else, symbol master lists somewhere else still (and not even having the decency to reflect that in a dynamic right click menu, no...the templates or modes or whatever read it from a menu file that's static, instead of just adding a folder where one can tie master list names to labels and save those labels in text files which the program then parses...I'd try to implement that but...proprietary software. Does it show that I'm an open source guy? I hope so. Especially since I'd actually be eager to work on it instead of just complaining, but complaints is all you get on this model.)