The free-for-all on labels in software lists is not working. There's no
consistency, labels are getting excessively long, people are starting to
use non-ASCII characters in labels making it harder for others to type
them when manipulating files on the command line, and there's too much
markup being put in labels.
The length limit is 127 characters, same as for labels in MAME itself.
This should be long enough to be descriptive. Remember that the Win32
path limit is 260 characters, and many applications and frameworks have
issues with longer paths, including Windows Explorer and the .NET
framework. Labels are used as filenames, so concessions need to be
made for this.
I have not abbreviated excessively long labels myself - they're
currently causing 135 validity errors. Someone else can fix them.
Printable ASCII characters are allowed, with a few exceptions. The
exceptions are limited to characters most likely to cause issues for
interactive shells and scripts:
* ! - csh event substitution (very difficult to escape properly)
* $ - sh varibale expansion
* % - csh job control, cmd variable expansion
* / - UNIX directory separator
* : - sh path separator, Windows drive qualifier
* \ - sh escape, Windows directory separator
Most of the labels that had to be edited were using ! for markup, or
using ! and % for titles in labels. Strangely, titles in labels are
often forced to lower case, despite this never being enforced for
software lists. There are also various other edits to titles used for
labels, such as moving articles to the end (with or without a comma),
or replacing spaces with underscores. As I already said, there's no
consistency at all.
There is far too much markup in labels. They're even being used for
notes in some cases (e.g. at least one case where a dumper's name is in
the label). The XML schema supports metadata - use it. For example,
you can use part_id for an unrestricted display name for a software
part. You can also use XML comments for notes.
And while on the topic of metadata, vgmplay.xml is putting the same
thing in the part_id as well as the label. The part_id should have
the actual title, not the title mangled to make it more suitable for
use as a filename. Addressing this would be a lot of work, given how
large the file is.
For now, empty data areas in software lists cause a verbose message
rather than a validation warning. There are thousands of software
lists using empty data areas to indicate the size/width of cartridge
RAM/EEPROM/etc.
- New dumps (all working, dumped by me):
Ai Shimai - Futari no Kajitsu
Doukyuusei 2 Special Disk
Super Ultra Mucchin Puripuri Cyborg Maririn DX
Music Pro-Towns (1990-05-23)
Shangrlia 2 Special Disk
S. A. 2
- Promoted Music Pro-Towns to working and added usage instructions.
- Replaced MS-DOS 6.20 L10 with the images from the Master CD, which should match the original disks. The previous images were the "installed" floppies that can be created from the original ones.
Get rid of a couple of copies of the CC0 text. Add header comment to
CC0 files to remind people editing them what the terms are. Also add
some missing XML headers. The header comments in layouts won't bloat
the binary - they get stripped out before compressing, same as any other
comments.
- Added alt_titles for most entries
- Added three new entries to the softlist, all dumped by me from the original disks and working:
DOR
DOR Part 3
Elle
This effectively reverts b380514764 and
c24473ddff, restoring the state at
598cd52272.
Before pushing, please check that what you're about to push is sane.
Check your local commit log and ensure there isn't anything out-of-place
before pushing to mainline. When things like this happen, it wastes
everyone's time. I really don't need this in a week when real work™ is
busting my balls and I'm behind where I want to be with preparing for
MAME release.
* fmtowns softlists: update supported status, new CD dumps
Re-tested the non-working items after the latest code changes and
updated the "supported" parameter accordingly. Also added these items to
the CD list:
- Doda Mega-Mix!!!
- Oshare Club
- Rinkan Gakkou
- Sakura no Mori
* fmtowns softlists: update supported, add new dumps
Further re-tested softlist items, and added new dumps to the lists:
- Battle Chess [redump.org / r09]
- Cameltry [r09]
- Dragon Slayer - The Legend of Heroes [r09]
- Emit Vol. 1 - Toki no Maigo [redump.org / r09]
- Emit Vol. 2 - Inochigake no Tabi [redump.org / r09]
- Ku²+ [Tokugawa Corporate Forums / DamienD]
* alt_titles and stuff
* cameltry status
FM Towns games (boot disks for CDs remain in the CD
list, for easier launching). Many thanks to r09 and
Breiztiger for help with info and images. [Fabio Priuli]
