Transfer/synchronize plugin settings between two PCs?

[Raffazahn]

I'd like to transfer the settings of my various plugins from my PC to my notebook (two installations of LotRO).
However, due to different screen resolutions I'd like to keep the positions of the UI elements belonging to the plugins unaltered on the notebook.

Is that possible? How?

I guess I have to copy over certain files or subdirectories - or even the complete plugin folder.

But I don't know, whether the plugins' UI element positions are stored together with the standard UI elements' positions in the same file and the other UI settings separately from this.

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Will "/ui save xyz" also save the positions of the plugins' UI elements?

Then I could use the command to save all positions on the notebook, copy over the plugin data from the PC, and if necessary use "/ui load xyz" to restore the ui positions.

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Any experience on this?
Maybe some of you even use Dropbox to synchronize the settings?

[Garan]

Plugins are not part of the standart UI so the /ui command does not have any impact on plugins. Any saved settings, including control positioning, is saved by the plugins themselves. All of these settings are in .plugindata files somewhere under your ..documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\PluginData folder (at the same level as the "Plugins" folder). The exact location will depend on whether the settings are saved per character, per server or per account - the choice is up to the plugin author and which setting they feel is best for their plugin. The exact name of the .plugindata file is also up to the author and may or may not make a lot of sense to an end user. Many plugins even use several .plugindata files to group related data. These folders also contain the xlm files that determine which plugins are auto loaded by the Turbine Plugin Manager so you may want to simply copy the entire PluginData folder. If you are unable to locat the settings file for a specific plugin I would suggest posting the question on the plugin's download page so that the author can respond since the answer can be different for each plugin.

As to resolution changes, some plugins are more portable than others. For instance, MoorMap saves all of it's size and location data as a percentage so that changes in resolution have a minimal impact while ItemTracker still uses actual pixel values. At a minimum, all of my plugins will attempt to verify that UI components remain on screen but they may not all scale correctly without the user making changes once the plugin loads. Some other plugins, notably older ones, do not take changes in resolution into consideration at all and it may be possible for UI elements like Icons to be placed off screen and be unreachable without deleting their .plugindata files. You would have to determine that on a plugin by plugin basis.

[Valamar]

I'd like to transfer the settings of my various plugins from my PC to my notebook (two installations of LotRO).
However, due to different screen resolutions I'd like to keep the positions of the UI elements belonging to the plugins unaltered on the notebook.
. . .
Any experience on this?
Maybe some of you even use Dropbox to synchronize the settings?

Yes, but no. Garan answered all of the technical "stuff." So, I'll tackle the experience part.

Ignoring the screen resolution problem as it depends on which plugins you are using and if they do or do not save "relative" location data...

I use the same "Plugins" and "PluginData" folders for all my toons across multiple servers and accounts.

I happen to play on a Mac, so I use "symbolic links" to point all of the different "PluginData" sub-folders (individual accounts)
and their respective server sub-folders to one folder. (Linux folks would use the same technique.)

Under Windows, I do not know what the equivalent to a "symbolic link" happens to be. (Note that an "alias" atop OS X does not work the same way as a Symbolic Link does underneath OSX.)

However, copying the PluginData folder via Dropbox will (should) work just fine.

As for the "relative positioning" -- it depends on the plugin. For example, I know that Tonic Bars does not maintain relative positioning information -- it has been requested, but not yet implemented.

[Feoktist]

Under Windows, I do not know what the equivalent to a "symbolic link" happens to be.

Is there no Google equivalent on Mac =) ? mklink command creates both hard and soft links, should do the trick for you.

[Raffazahn]

Thanks for the explicit answer, Garan. +Rep for that (EDIT: oh, well, you have disabled, it)!

I did some researched and looked into the .PLUGINDATA for BuffBars. There I found coordinates as absolute numbers.

So I will move my plugin UI elements on the PC to a position close to the upper left corner of the UI, copy the complete the Plugin folders to my notebook and then individually (re-)arrange the positions of the plugin icons and windows as needed for both screen resolutions. This should work fine and is hopefully less hassle than setting up all plugin preferences again.

Regarding the link, I cannot use it, as the plugin GUI elements' coordinates will be different, so the PLUGINDATA files will differ after the arrangement.
Mklink in Win7 works pretty well with Dropbox, though. I use it to synchronize game save folder of other games between the PC and notebook.

[Galuhad]

I would assume you could just copy and paste the plugindata folder from your current location to the new one.

With regards to the resolution difference; my plugins store the exact location, but I have a function that detects if they are drawn off-screen in which case they are pulled inside.

If you're having problems with a specific plugin but don't want to reset all the settings, you could always locate and open the relative settings file, and make adjustments to the x and y values (perhaps set to 0 and then reposition afterwards).

[fallohide]

I do this with mine and haven't had any problems. You do have to be careful about which way you're copying the data, but in general, it's easy enough. I use a flash drive and keep the "master" 'MyDocuments/Lord of the Rings Online' folder there. Any plugin updates are made to the flash drive, then copied to both computers.

But - don't overwrite UserPreferences.ini - that's where the individual computer/graphics settings are. I keep a backup of both UserPreferences.ini files on the flash drive, named (creatively enough) Desktop.UserPreferences.ini and Laptop.UserPreferences.ini. That way, if I do accidently copy over the original, I can easily restore the right version.

You'll also have to copy the PluginsData folder back and forth to keep it up to date/correct. But, the Plugins folder you can always overwrite from the master folder on the flash drive.


As far as the ui goes, I do something similar with those files. And I name the ui files [charactername].laptop and [charactername].desktop. Then there's no wondering if I accidently wrote over one of the layout files.

[Raffazahn]

Well, thanks to everybody contributing to this thread! I learned what I needed to know and even some workflows how to deal with the issue. Think, I'll either move the items on the screen and/or edit the x/y-coordinates in the text files. Before that I'll use the suggested safety-backup method with copying and renaming the folders, however I will put the copies into my Dropbox folder instead onto an USB stick.

[Amrundir]

I happen to play on a Mac, so I use "symbolic links" to point all of the different "PluginData" sub-folders (individual accounts)
and their respective server sub-folders to one folder. (Linux folks would use the same technique.)

Do you use plugins like AltInventory or TitanBar?

I thought, it would be a cool, having information about all items on all chars for one server. (across different accounts) But I stopped, when thinking about shared storage.
What happens, when having more then one account with shared storage? I did not try, but I'm afraid, the plugin will run in trouble here, simply because the plugin programmer would not expect having the same data file for different accounts.
Any informations about this would be appreciated.

[Garan]

Do you use plugins like AltInventory or TitanBar?

I thought, it would be a cool, having information about all items on all chars for one server. (across different accounts) But I stopped, when thinking about shared storage.
What happens, when having more then one account with shared storage? I did not try, but I'm afraid, the plugin will run in trouble here, simply because the plugin programmer would not expect having the same data file for different accounts.
Any informations about this would be appreciated.

You are correct. This is a limitation of sharing multiple accounts since any serverwide information will get overwritten by the last account accessed. That not only affects Shared Storage but also shared currencies in the barter wallet. If Turbine ever implements a way for plugins to differentiate accounts then this could be overcome but I do not expect that since the account path uses the actual account name which would be a significant security risk. Unfortunately, using an alternate identifier, like a numeric ID would also have issues caused by activities such as adding or removing accounts. I've considered adding an option to manually track multiple accounts when using a shared folder but the benefit doesn't justify the work involved, at least at this time.

FWIW, the Bag and Vault quantity totals from AltInventory and the non-shared currency totals from Wallet will correctly reflect the total across all accounts (assuming the player has used symbolic links to share the data folder and autoloads the plugins on login and keeps them loaded) as those totals are tracked by the plugin.

[Amrundir]

Thanks Garan.
(Yesterday, still at work, I recognized your name as plugin author, but wasn't aware, that you are the author of AltInventory )

Just for fun:
http://www.mobypicture.com/user/Amru...392/sizes/full
Title of tha picture "screen too small".