FYI: You can add comments to other peoples files

[The Robman]

I don't think anyone's noticed this feature yet, but you can add comments to files in our file section, even if the file belongs to someone else. This might be useful if you want to point out that the MENU button code is wrong and the correct code is 123 or something like that. Of course, you can also add compliments, etc there too.

These comments don't show up as new messages, so they're not a good way to get a message out to the general population, but they can be used to get a message to the next person who will use the file.

See an example here...
https://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=1368

You can also "rate" a file, so others will get an idea of how good or bad it is.

Just FYI.

[ElizabethD]

How about renaming on the main screen?
Here is an example:
https://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=1535
Summary on the second screen identifies the equipment as Panasonic SA-HT70. You'd never know it from the original filename Panasonic-EUR7502X10.rmdu which identifies the remote, not the gear to control.

[The Robman]

That's an example of what should be good practice, but unfortunately, we don't have the power to force people to follow it.

I edited that file for you.

[johnsfine]

I don't know how much flexibility you might have and or kludge in the forum software, but it would be really nice to have a second directory of links into the set of upgrades:

Right now we have a directory of upgrades where each upgrade appears once, with its original name. That is a valuable directory to have, but it would be great to have a second directory where:

Each file appears as many time as appropriate with different names for purposes of sorting the top level directory but the same name for the ultimately downloaded file.

For example, someone might discover that their Hitacchi 305 DVD is perfectly operated by a Samsung DVD upgrade previously posted (I think that's actually true, but whether it is true isn't relevent to its use as an example). How do they usefully share that discovery?

They could put a comment in the Samsung upgrade or in a post. But odds are the next person looking for support for that Hitachi DVD won't find that comment.

Right now, I think the best they could do would be rename and reupload the Samsung upgrade as a Hitachi upgrade.

It would be better if they added a comment to the existing upgrade mentioning the additional model they discovered it supports (as they can now) AND could add something to the directory level that would allow someone looking under Hitachi in the directory of upgrades to find it.

BTW, I have a lot of such model duplications across brand as a result of finding CCF files for one brand that match rmdu files for another (but that isn't where I got this Hitachi example. That was JP1 to JP1 comparison).

[gfb107]

I think you can already do this, although most of us probably don't know how. On the File Upload page, set the File URL to point to the already created file, instead of actually uploading a file from your PC.

[The Robman]

Exactly. For example, here is a link to a demo upgrade that I created a while ago to illustrate something or other...

https://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=1368

And here is an apparently totally new upgrade that I just created, that actually links to the previous upgrade...

https://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=2071

[johnsfine]

Thanks for the reminder that there is a better way to handle DecodeIr.dll etc. (that I frequently update in my own web space and rarely update here). I'll figure out how to change the entry here to a link. Then when I slow down the pace of updating DecodeIR and/or want to reduce traffic to my space, I could change the entry here back to an actual file.

But that doesn't quite cover what I requested above (close though) mainly because of the comment topic that started this thread.

I was hoping for a directory entry that reached the same download page, with the original description and all added comments. Rather than one that reached the same file through a different download page.

If we use the feature a lot, then it would also be important to be able to sometimes see the directory the old way (without all the duplicates).

[The Robman]

There is no way to extract the contents of the descriptions and comments and bring them up to the main page, certainly not in a sortable fashion.

So the best solution when a given file covers more than one device is to create seperate entries for it.

[The Robman]

Thanks for the reminder that there is a better way to handle DecodeIr.dll etc. (that I frequently update in my own web space and rarely update here).

The decodeIR entry here points to the file on your server, so when you update it there, it's automatically updated here.

But yes, if you want to reduce your traffic, you could actually upload it here.