PCG relative file path to companion

SUBJECT: [pcgen] [pathfinder] PCG relative file path to companion
DATE: 5/27/2010 3:35 PM (PDT)
Submitter: saxum.caribetum@....

I have hit a tiresome problem with the relative file-path handling:

I have this Shadow Dancer that I've been blathering about. She and her
mistress live in a Folder "Chars".
Other characters, sent to me (as DM) by the head-of-family of the
players, I place in a sub-folder, "Chars\HoF"

So ... I had been working on more than one PC, in the sequence:

Chars\Dancer.pcg
Chars\Umbra.pcg
Chars\HoF\Ranger.pcg

having been out of PCGen and back in, I reloaded the Shadow Dancer for
the Recent File List, and then tried to open the Shadow from her
Inventory, Resources, Load button.

I got an error claiming the file had moved - close inspection of the
(rather long) absolute path, showed that PCGen had applied the last File
Open path to the relative path, not the path to the (recent files
opened) Dancer.... It was looking for

Chars\HoF\Shadow.pcg
not
Chars\Shadow.pcg

Actually it was worse than that... I'm not actually sure HOW it got so,
but Dancer.pcg had been saved with the absolute path to the Shadow.pcg file:
C:\Users\Neil\Documents\Games\Chars\umbra.pcg

and the absolute path which was failing was:
C:\Users\Neil\Documents\Games\Chars\C:\Users\Neil\Documents\Games\Chars\HoF\umbra.pcg

so 2 bugs

1. PCGen is mis-handling relative path filenames - which should be
based on the path to the parent file, but are using the
last-browsed File Open Dialog path
2. PCGen is not recognising absolute pathnames and using the actual
pathname as stored.

I have a suspicion that PCGen writes an absolute path if the path is
anything other than .\thing (which curiously PCGen writes as "\thing"
not ".\thing"), and that PCGen does not handle eg "..\thing" or
"..\images\picture.jpg".
A small thing, perhaps, but not handling relative filenames well means
it is hard to perform simple house-keeping like moving folders or
renaming them.

(At work we follow a simple rule:

• use relative paths, including .. and sub-folders if the path to
  the linked file is on the same drive as the linking file
• don't use more than 3 ..'s (..\..\..)
  (prevents sillies such as when everything is on C:, but one file
  is in Documents And Settings, and one is in a normal random
  folder, which you could reach as ..\..\..\..\..\Documents and
  Settings\neil\My Documents\thing)
• otherwise write the absolute pathname
• while in memory, all filenames are stored as absolute paths, and
  are relativised when a file containing a pathname is written to disk.
• if you save a linked file to a new destination, change the
  absolute linked name to link to it, so saving the parent saves the
  right (freshly relativised) link, no matter where you then save
  the parent.

)