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Concur!

Posted by: @fuchsr

Would cut the number of posts where we need to explain why and how to zip up 3mf files dramatically. 

And it's probably just a 2 minute task for a programmer to add it to a config file. 

It must be very off putting for new users when the first response to a query is a garbled demand to post a file which cannot be posted. I'm sure this feature, irrespective of the effort required, will make the forum seem much less "judgee".

Lack of warnings is definitely confusing, and wastes time for everybody

Posted by: @towlerg

It must be very off putting for new users when the first response to a query is a garbled demand to post a file which cannot be posted. I'm sure this feature, irrespective of the effort required, will make the forum seem much less "judgee".

Agreed a more informative message should be added. If I'm not mistaken, prusaprinters.org actually unpacks .zip files and repacks them. I assume they do some sort of scanning and checks, so "the software" is perfectly capable of creating a zip if required. Why not just stuff everything into a zip after creation? Hell, they could even do some compression on uploaded images to reduce storage requirements. I know some of my screengrabs can be hogs.

I suspect they are already doing this. If you rename a .3MF to zip, then double click on it, it open in WinRar (in my case) just like any ZIP/RAR file. Is that what you meant?

Yup

I

Posted by: @bobstro

Posted by: @towlerg

It must be very off putting for new users when the first response to a query is a garbled demand to post a file which cannot be posted. I'm sure this feature, irrespective of the effort required, will make the forum seem much less "judgee".

Agreed a more informative message should be added. If I'm not mistaken, prusaprinters.org actually unpacks .zip files and repacks them. I assume they do some sort of scanning and checks, so "the software" is perfectly capable of creating a zip if required. Why not just stuff everything into a zip after creation? Hell, they could even do some compression on uploaded images to reduce storage requirements. I know some of my screengrabs can be hogs.

 

Isn’t that the truth.  I have tried to become less blunt and to always explain that the 3MF file must be zipped or compressed.  I know some users do not know that zipper means.  

Let's be serious. In this day and age, ZIP is an anachronism. In my previous life I had to worry about storage for labs that produced terabytes of data per day. 3MF files are low megabytes; the largest I could find on my hard disk was 33.8MB. And it's not that thousands of them are getting posted every day. Disk space is cheap (until you get into the petabyte range). Zip should be put out to pasture. 

Archiving versus compressing

Posted by: @fuchsr

Let's be serious. In this day and age, ZIP is an anachronism. In my previous life I had to worry about storage for labs that produced terabytes of data per day. 3MF files are low megabytes; the largest I could find on my hard disk was 33.8MB. And it's not that thousands of them are getting posted every day. Disk space is cheap (until you get into the petabyte range). Zip should be put out to pasture. 

I don't think it's solely for compression. Putting files in an archive file, whether it be an uncompressed tar format or highly compressed zip format, also reduces the number of files created. With large numbers of small files, this can greatly reduce storage overhead as a single file wastes less space due to the larger minimum file allocation unit size when compared to lots of small files. It also lets you preserve a directory hierarchy and file attributes when that matters. As importantly, a clutter of files generally makes management more annoying. I also get annoyed when downloading or syncing a large number of files if there's a pause between each one.

I've got no issues with zip as a format, but it would be nice if the forum software made it more obvious for new users, or "just handled it" behind the scenes.

Upload

I am not sure why they will not allow 3MF files.  On my website, I protect it by being elective on which files maybe uploaded and secluding the files till I have reviewed them.  I found uploads to be problematic on Vbulletin in particular.  

Bob, I'm not disagreeing at all with your point but this discussion started with the requirement to zip a single 3mf file. Sure, keep zip as a way to bundle files, but don't force us to zip a single 3mf. 

Good example of when "behind the scenes" automation makes sense

Posted by: @fuchsr

Bob, I'm not disagreeing at all with your point but this discussion started with the requirement to zip a single 3mf file. Sure, keep zip as a way to bundle files, but don't force us to zip a single 3mf. 

3MFs are actually zipped, so I don't disagree at all. Whether the forum software recognizes 3MF -- probably unlikely unless Team Prusa develops a 3D printing format-aware modification or plugin to the forum software -- or just zips any acceptable file silently in the background, the user shouldn't have to know or care in this day and age. Hell, it could take care of converting rar, scanning each file, and other cleanup. I just wanted to point out that, in general, some sort of archiving makes sense. 

Now, having said that, if there's a choice between making the forum more comfortable for new users or improving PrusaSlicer and printer firmware, I'm firmly biased towards the latter. I know their dev team is under a lot of pressure, and I'm sure forum software isn't what they want to be focused on. Better "signage" in the form of warnings on the upload forms should be enough.

Forum software isn't exactly state of the art

Posted by: @cwbullet

I am not sure why they will not allow 3MF files.  On my website, I protect it by being elective on which files maybe uploaded and secluding the files till I have reviewed them.  I found uploads to be problematic on Vbulletin in particular.  

That, I think, is just the consequence of most of the world being unaware of 3D printing-centric file formats. "Zip good, others bad" has been a mantra for decades now, and to be fair, I've seen very few forum packages that actually test files to verify content. I agree that deeming a file secure based on the name is not smart.

This is something Prusa could fix, but I suspect their plates are pretty full. If I'm not mistaken, the same individual running the forum is also trying to put together the documentation pages.

RE: Welcome to our new forum! Feedback here!

It's impossible to edit my own posts? why?  That's a first for me.

RE: Welcome to our new forum! Feedback here!

Posted by: @chevair

It's impossible to edit my own posts? why?  That's a first for me.

There is a timer (something like five minutes) which allows editing right after things are posted but not after.

The reasoning is to prevent someone from posting a seemingly-innocent item and then returning to add or replace it with a spammy post.

RE: Welcome to our new forum! Feedback here!

Thanks for the answer. Sounds great...but that's what user rating is for, there are plenty of systems that rate users besides an actual moderator. We should let trusted people edit their content. I've made a mistake in the title and there is no way to change it or delete the whole thing. What if someone made a calculation error in the main post, the only way he can fix it is by writing a comment with a fix down below, it's frustrating and spamming. Anyway. My opinion  

Posted by: @jsw

Posted by: @chevair

It's impossible to edit my own posts? why?  That's a first for me.

There is a timer (something like five minutes) which allows editing right after things are posted but not after.

The reasoning is to prevent someone from posting a seemingly-innocent item and then returning to add or replace it with a spammy post.

RE: Welcome to our new forum! Feedback here!

Timers on replies are to prevent the destruction of forum content.  Trust me.  I run 3 forums.  It is needed.  

Posted by: @chevair

Thanks for the answer. Sounds great...but that's what user rating is for, there are plenty of systems that rate users besides an actual moderator. We should let trusted people edit their content. I've made a mistake in the title and there is no way to change it or delete the whole thing. What if someone made a calculation error in the main post, the only way he can fix it is by writing a comment with a fix down below, it's frustrating and spamming. Anyway. My opinion  

Posted by: @jsw

Posted by: @chevair

It's impossible to edit my own posts? why?  That's a first for me.

There is a timer (something like five minutes) which allows editing right after things are posted but not after.

The reasoning is to prevent someone from posting a seemingly-innocent item and then returning to add or replace it with a spammy post.

 

RE: Welcome to our new forum! Feedback here!

I understand your point bu it doesn't make it more convincing. Sorry. It only makes me want to post somewhere else. After all, it's a support and technical forum and as an engineer I want to be able to get back to my content and fix it's essence or clarify myself a bit better. You know, knowledge is an evolving thing. Imagine if Wikipedia acted the way we do it here..a mess. Just making a point that it takes a lot of time and effort to find the buttom line in some cases. Thanks for the reply.

Posted by: @cwbullet

Timers on replies are to prevent the destruction of forum content.  Trust me.  I run 3 forums.  It is needed.  

Posted by: @chevair

Thanks for the answer. Sounds great...but that's what user rating is for, there are plenty of systems that rate users besides an actual moderator. We should let trusted people edit their content. I've made a mistake in the title and there is no way to change it or delete the whole thing. What if someone made a calculation error in the main post, the only way he can fix it is by writing a comment with a fix down below, it's frustrating and spamming. Anyway. My opinion  

Posted by: @jsw

Posted by: @chevair

It's impossible to edit my own posts? why?  That's a first for me.

There is a timer (something like five minutes) which allows editing right after things are posted but not after.

The reasoning is to prevent someone from posting a seemingly-innocent item and then returning to add or replace it with a spammy post.

 

 

RE: Welcome to our new forum! Feedback here!

Posted by: @bobstro

Hell, they could even do some compression on uploaded images to reduce storage requirements. I know some of my screengrabs can be hogs.

I hope you have all those screengrabs ZIPped up somewhere safe because it looks like they will disappear from your postings after one year.

Lesson learned

Posted by: @kennd

 I hope you have all those screengrabs ZIPped up somewhere safe because it looks like they will disappear from your postings after one year.

The important ones are up on my notes pages (see link in signature). This isn't the first time content has been lost here. Images were dumped when they moved to these new forums. For a long time I just linked to my images hosted on imgur and some of my oldie posts are still intact. For anything recent, I just include a link to my online notebook. Lesson learned.

RE: Welcome to our new forum! Feedback here!

Twice recently this has happened!

I entered a detailed response to a post, hit 'Add Reply' and the system errored out with a very terse 'some error has occured' type of message.

To add insult to injury, using the browser's 'back' button did not allow me to recover my writing.

On the second failure of this type, a few hours ago, it appeared that I was logged out between beginning the reply and submitting the reply.  I have noticed, recently, that I find myself logged out every so often.

RE: Welcome to our new forum! Feedback here!

One other issue.

Twice this morning I tried editing a post, well within the 5 minute (I assume) window, to add one line.

Twice I added one line at the bottom, and twice it said that it was edited successfully, but the additional line did not appear.  I just gave up on it.