Not just trolling, OTS2 seems great. It has a lot of nice additions. And defines a standard. And we all know where standards have taken us. But i digress..

I just don't understand why the central role of NetLoadModule.. Just looking at that $ModulesDir$ makes me think of the winnt/system32 dir, with a few thousand files in a great big mess. What was so wrong with the theme maker providing the modules? Don't give me the size argument.. A module has an average 50k. Much less than all the graphics of most themes.. And that way LS was just responsible for assuring the presence of the core modules (well, not core modules any more..). Well, you get my point.

This must have been surely discussed somewhere else, if so please just redirect me to that dark place.

it has been. but here a quick breakdown anyway.

1) it allows us to have a common module dir that the community has been talking about for years.

2)help themers to be sure that the users have the correct modules so the theme works as intended

3)SIZE of themes. this isn't a problem for users as much as ppl who host the themes. in this community almost all hosting( if not all ) is provided by the generosity of a few of its users. having the user only download the required module once instead of in each theme reduces the bandwidth burden and allows site such as this one to keep going. ( thx DEV)

If it's too messy, quit litestep, delete all the modules, then restart it.

And if people used png images instead of bmp then modules could easily dwarf them.

:) I was slightly annoyed by RabidCow's reply, until i realised that deleting all the modules was an option with OTS2, and not some sort of joke.

I believe it's easier to be sure of what modules users are using by supplying them. Maybe i'm just plain wrong. But the bandwith argument can indeed be an interesting one.

I guess it comes down to personal preference. The community wished a common module dir, I enjoyed the ideia of a theme's own «module space». Well, nothing stops me from doing it, so i should just stop bitching. I will. After all, LS is all about customization..

Thanks for the replies. Farewell and godspeed.

well, you're still "supplying" them, by specifying in the theme.rc exactly which module AND version is downloaded. so you still have as much control over that as before. of course, anyone can go in and change it, but there's nothing that can be done about that, and that shouldn't BE changed, anyways. the bandwidth issue could be annoyance to some dial-up users, but that's about it (oh, and possibly module hosts).

believe it or not, I've had my LS directory structure setup this way b4 OTS2 even came out. I guess it's just the fact that I hate the idea of having multiple copies of the same file, so everytime I get a new theme, I dump all the modules into my LSdir\modules folder and edit the step.rc file to use the new path.

So, for me when OTS2 came out, I thought it was just a brilliant idea, because now everything seemed more flexible and even more tightly integrated. Just my $0.02

Actually you do lose a small amount of power with themes by using NLM, but it's very small: If a theme needed a custom hacked version of a module, this wouldn't be available with NLM.

But I think that if a theme really needs to do this then it's a sign that something is wrong with the module.

rabid, what about for module testing? for example, I was running a beta copy of vtray for a little while that I got from vendicator helping him track down a bug with the scrolling function (I can't remember if it turned out to be user error or a problem with the module, but that's irrelevant right now), but now we can't do that? would it be possible for someone to modify the core files so the module designers can manually load modules (like with the old loadmodule xxxxx.dll style) by using a command only given out to designers, and whoever they enlist to help them beta test? that way, the wrong people SHOULDN'T get ahold of the command and include it in their themes, thereby screwing up the whole OTS2 initiative. just a thought. and besides, there's something wrong with almost every module. that's why the module writers keep coming out with new versions. ;)

well... theres nothing preventing you from just using a loadmodule line to load that specific module if you want to use it personally or for testing purposes... ots2 is just a suggestion for theme distribution, its not hard coded in(:

oh, I thought the loadmodule command was actually removed from the core. ok, nevermind then. :P

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I've just been renaming it to the expected new version, copying it to $ModulesDir$ and using *NetLoadModule with it anyway. :P