The free-for-all on labels in software lists is not working. There's no
consistency, labels are getting excessively long, people are starting to
use non-ASCII characters in labels making it harder for others to type
them when manipulating files on the command line, and there's too much
markup being put in labels.
The length limit is 127 characters, same as for labels in MAME itself.
This should be long enough to be descriptive. Remember that the Win32
path limit is 260 characters, and many applications and frameworks have
issues with longer paths, including Windows Explorer and the .NET
framework. Labels are used as filenames, so concessions need to be
made for this.
I have not abbreviated excessively long labels myself - they're
currently causing 135 validity errors. Someone else can fix them.
Printable ASCII characters are allowed, with a few exceptions. The
exceptions are limited to characters most likely to cause issues for
interactive shells and scripts:
* ! - csh event substitution (very difficult to escape properly)
* $ - sh varibale expansion
* % - csh job control, cmd variable expansion
* / - UNIX directory separator
* : - sh path separator, Windows drive qualifier
* \ - sh escape, Windows directory separator
Most of the labels that had to be edited were using ! for markup, or
using ! and % for titles in labels. Strangely, titles in labels are
often forced to lower case, despite this never being enforced for
software lists. There are also various other edits to titles used for
labels, such as moving articles to the end (with or without a comma),
or replacing spaces with underscores. As I already said, there's no
consistency at all.
There is far too much markup in labels. They're even being used for
notes in some cases (e.g. at least one case where a dumper's name is in
the label). The XML schema supports metadata - use it. For example,
you can use part_id for an unrestricted display name for a software
part. You can also use XML comments for notes.
And while on the topic of metadata, vgmplay.xml is putting the same
thing in the part_id as well as the label. The part_id should have
the actual title, not the title mangled to make it more suitable for
use as a filename. Addressing this would be a lot of work, given how
large the file is.
For now, empty data areas in software lists cause a verbose message
rather than a validation warning. There are thousands of software
lists using empty data areas to indicate the size/width of cartridge
RAM/EEPROM/etc.
Get rid of a couple of copies of the CC0 text. Add header comment to
CC0 files to remind people editing them what the terms are. Also add
some missing XML headers. The header comments in layouts won't bloat
the binary - they get stripped out before compressing, same as any other
comments.
"chestfld" alt_title must have been incorrectly copied from a sales listing as the subtitle read "without box or instructions". Replaced with correct subtitle.
Added an extra dot to "touch" subtitle to match what is printed on the instruction manual. The box cover only shows one dot but this is due to the line break after the word "of". In Japanese orthography the dots are certainly optional but mixing the dots and no-dots in the same phrase looks awkward.
* moved various famiclones 'ONE BUS' systems from nes.xml to the nes_vt.cpp driver as they're standalone systems, not cartridges.
new NOT WORKING
VG Pocket Tablet [BeckieRGB]
Game Prince RS-1 [BeckieRGB]
VG Pocket Tablet is potentially the most interesting as all the games run in enhanced mode and it even includes a fully licensed version of Frogger (although I need to fix the raster effects for it to look reasonable)
Adan y Eva [hashes were known, but ROMs surfaced on No-Intro]
AV Super Real Pachinko [Frank Cifaldi]
nes.xml: Marked edu2k48 as working, added notes about mouse titles.
Made koko not use battery-backed WRAM as evidenced on PCB picture. (nw)
bus/nes/waixing.cpp: Slight modernizations. waixing_sgzlz_device is now
implemented the way CaH4e3 does it, also gets some titles mostly working
in full. (nw)
fc_suborkey_device: Make PgUp and PgDown keys actually work (nw)
nes: Removed old references to void dance2k mapper
nes.xml: WRAM corrections based on assumptions, add notes about ALL
waixing_sgzlz based educational carts, misc corrections (nw)
nes: Fix debug output when reading iNES headers. (nw)
nes/ppu2c0x: Improved PAL clone timings. (nw)
nes/n2a03: Refactored clock definitions [includes other drivers using the
N2A03] (nw)
nes: Improved refresh rates and timings to reflect nesdev (nw)
nes: Softlist improvements and corrections [koko, mkgoogoo and others] (nw)
nes: Verified koko in the softlist as a good dump (nw)
nes: Softlist additions [subor5, subor6, subor10, subor11, subor13, doolybld]
(nw)
New not working machines added: Subor SB-486, M82 Display Unit (PAL) (nw)
nes: Marked drpcjr as NOT WORKING due to missing hardware. (nw)
New working machines added: Micro Genius IQ-501, Micro Genius IQ-502, Dendy Classic 2 (nw)
nes: marked dendy as a clone of iq501 (nw)
=============
nes.xml: Venice Beach Volleyball (Gluk Video) [sewave]
out of whatsnew: one more Spanish dump which had been documented at bootgod's DB but never released is now available! hooray!
Vas Crabb