NationStates

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 1:56 am**

Greetings and Salutations,

After volunteering to help out on the technical side with NS, I've been slowly getting started on new additions to the game. I'd like to ask you all for comments about a new feature to upload and download nation dossiers.

The current (draft) implementation is here: Advanced Dossier.

This should allow players to easily add large amounts of nations to their dossier (the maximum is still 2500, that 's not planned to be changed), exchange nation dossiers between players by sharing the dossier file, generate/process the dossier off-site based on whatever information you might want to use, or stuff I hadn't thought of but you might.

So, please try this out. Is there anything wrong with it or not working? Can you think of making this more useful if only it could also do X, Y, or Z? Let me know!

Ballotonia

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 2:00 am**

Umm thanks but the current one is fine for me, its not like i have a whole lot of nations to dossier anyway.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 2:06 am**

I love you.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 5:39 am**

I will try it out later, but thank you so much for doing this! It will help immensely. What a fantastic idea

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 6:18 am**

No chance at all of enlarging the dossier size? Due to invaders now using 10 times the nations due to switching an increase in size of the dossier seems appropriate.

I love this new feature so far, thanks for the work on it.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 6:31 am**

Improving Wordiness wrote:No chance at all of enlarging the dossier size? Due to invaders now using 10 times the nations due to switching an increase in size of the dossier seems appropriate.

I love this new feature so far, thanks for the work on it.

19 times out of 20 I use dirty puppets on my raids Wordy, and besides even if you don't have them in your dossier you can always spot them. I managed to do it when I defended without much difficulty. I do like the general concept, it's interesting. I don't mind that it doesn't really do much for raiders, I tend to keep a dossier of major defenders (let's me keep track of where they are and paints targets).

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 7:57 am**

Great feature. It explodes if you aren't logged in when you try and visit it though. :)

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 10:42 am**

I tried uploading a list of my nations, but it said "Error processing the uploaded file." and "Processing halted at line 18."

Line 17 was "pink"
Line 18 was "red"
Line 19 was "robin_hood"

Perhaps the script has a problem with three-lettered nations?

EDIT: But "Red" was added to my dossier, "Robin Hood" was not.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 10:59 am**

Unibot II wrote:I tried uploading a list of my nations, but it said "Error processing the uploaded file." and "Processing halted at line 18."

Line 17 was "pink"
Line 18 was "red"
Line 19 was "robin_hood"

Perhaps the script has a problem with three-lettered nations?

EDIT: But "Red" was added to my dossier, "Robin Hood" was not.

Maybe it counts the first line as line 0, then line 1 and so on, so what you see as line 19 is really line 18?

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 12:03 pm**

Ballotonia wrote:Can you think of making this more useful if only it could also do X, Y, or Z? Let me know!

I'm sure this has come up before in previous discussions of dossier enhancement, but it would be really cool if we could organize our dossier in some fashion (tags, folders, or the like). The Advanced Dossier now allows us to easily reorder the nations in our dossier (download file, reorder nations, clear dossier, upload new file), but it would be nice to add some levels of classification.

Naturally, this can be worked around by using the dossiers of puppet nations, but it seems in keeping with the spirit of this addition to have a way to sort dossier'd nations.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 12:06 pm**

Crushing Our Enemies wrote:
Ballotonia wrote:Can you think of making this more useful if only it could also do X, Y, or Z? Let me know!

I'm sure this has come up before in previous discussions of dossier enhancement, but it would be really cool if we could organize our dossier in some fashion (tags, folders, or the like). The Advanced Dossier now allows us to easily reorder the nations in our dossier (download file, reorder nations, clear dossier, upload new file), but it would be nice to add some levels of classification.

Naturally, this can be worked around by using the dossiers of puppet nations, but it seems in keeping with the spirit of this addition to have a way to sort dossier'd nations.

Now that would be interesting. Creating our own categories would be nice, but even some simple lists would really enhance the feature.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 12:19 pm**

Crushing Our Enemies wrote:it would be really cool if we could organize our dossier in some fashion (tags, folders, or the like).

It's absolutely come up before. SalusaSecondus looked into it in great detail, and decided that the current structure really couldn't accommodate anything of that sort. We'd need a completely new Dossier concept, which simply isn't a coding priority for the vast majority of users, so it's on a far back burner.

I'll point out that this new feature allows all the organization you desire. Now that you have the ability to download and upload dossiers, you can do any sorting and tagging you wish offline, then upload the relevant parts as your 'working dossier' for whatever task you currently have. I can think of several methods using spreadsheets, personal databases, and XML-harvesting scripts right off the top of my head. It shouldn't be a problem for you to come up with custom solutions that do exactly what you want.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 12:28 pm**

Frisbeeteria wrote:
Mallorea and Riva wrote:it would be really cool if we could organize our dossier in some fashion (tags, folders, or the like).

It's absolutely come up before. SalusaSecondus looked into it in great detail, and decided that the current structure really couldn't accommodate anything of that sort. We'd need a completely new Dossier concept, which simply isn't a coding priority for the vast majority of users, so it's on a far back burner.

I'll point out that this new feature allows all the organization you desire. Now that you have the ability to download and upload dossiers, you can do any sorting and tagging you wish offline, then upload the relevant parts as your 'working dossier' for whatever task you currently have. I can think of several methods using spreadsheets, personal databases, and XML-harvesting scripts right off the top of my head. It shouldn't be a problem for you to come up with custom solutions that do exactly what you want.

>.> *grumbles about being misquoted*
I'll be fiddling around with it and seeing what I can do

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 12:32 pm**

Mallorea and Riva wrote:>.> *grumbles about being misquoted*

Oops. Internal 'quote' failure. Fixed.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 12:34 pm**

Frisbeeteria wrote:
Mallorea and Riva wrote:>.> *grumbles about being misquoted*

Oops. Internal 'quote' failure. Fixed and gave you mod powers.

Thanks Fris :lol:

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 1:50 pm**

North Wiedna wrote:
Unibot II wrote:I tried uploading a list of my nations, but it said "Error processing the uploaded file." and "Processing halted at line 18."

Line 17 was "pink"
Line 18 was "red"
Line 19 was "robin_hood"

Perhaps the script has a problem with three-lettered nations?

EDIT: But "Red" was added to my dossier, "Robin Hood" was not.

Maybe it counts the first line as line 0, then line 1 and so on, so what you see as line 19 is really line 18?

I seem to have no problem whatsoever to add robin_hood to my dossier, so I'm unable to reproduce this. Are you sure you used an underscore? Maybe you accidentally typed a tab after that nation name?

And, yes, it reports where processing halted, so the error is on the next line. I'll be changing that in the next version (a few days from now), so in the future it will report the line number where the first error occurred.

Ballotonia

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 3:45 pm**

Figured out what it was, there was some white-space after "robin_hood ", so I removed the white-space and it's worked since.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 3:55 pm**

All seems okay...

Now about the "Reports" being available as RSS feeds.......

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 8:30 pm**

The whitespace thing is annoying. That should be pretty easy to chomp when the list is parsed.

Perhaps adding the _ replacement for people that forget to put them in would be nice too.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 8:56 pm**

This so-called "feature" is going to destroy the game! Mark my words. I have been a long-time player but if this gets implemented, I will leave and NEVER COME BACK.

This post has been part of Ballotonia's admin training.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 9:00 pm**

Cerberion wrote:It explodes if you aren't logged in when you try and visit it though.

Added page to our list of those requiring login.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 9:09 pm**

Testlandia wrote:This so-called "feature" is going to destroy the game! Mark my words. I have been a long-time player but if this gets implemented, I will leave and NEVER COME BACK.

This post has been part of Ballotonia's admin training.

Can you explain why this will destroy the game? Just trying to understand your concerns.

Did I pass?

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 9:20 pm**

Unibot II wrote:Did I pass?

Fail. Big time.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 11:10 pm**

Frisbeeteria wrote:
Unibot II wrote:Did I pass?

Fail. Big time.

Well we can't all be admins! Alas, I guess I'll stick to being a player then.

Posted: **Thu Apr 19, 2012 11:55 pm**

I like the fact of a new system for the Dossier. The current is somewhat boring with not as much functionality as I'd like.

NationStates

Feature: Up/Download nation dossiers (beta testing)

Feature: Up/Download nation dossiers (beta testing)