IMPORTANT NOTE WHEN UPDATING FROM ANY OLDER VERSION TO VERSION 1.4 OR ABOVE: If you do not save your old .malist files with UTF-8 encoding, they will NOT open properly in version 1.4 of this program.
To save an .malist to use UTF-8 encoding (on Windows 10 at least): 1) Open any older .malist files in Notepad. 2) In the top left, select File>Save As... 3) Set the File name to whatever you want, then look for the "Encoding:" drop down menu in the bottom right (it should be left of the Save button) 4) Select "UTF-8" from the Encoding drop-down menu. 5) Save the file After doing this, your file should open properly in versions 1.4 and above.
Not putting this as a bug yet because I might just be doing something very wrong, but I keep running into an issue where saving stops working (the asterisks no longer disappear when saving through any method, and trying to close always gives the "unsaved changes" warning even after saving in that menu too), and attempting to load the list after closing and restarting results in a totally empty one with as many blank rows as I had mods and categories, plus one blank lighter grey row where the original "mods" category was. I really want to use this for planning purposes, and when it's working it's brilliant, but at the moment it's just not reliable for me. Do you have any idea what might be causing this?
Very sorry this happened to you. Do you know when exactly the saving started to glitch out? Also, if possible, could you PM me the .malist for the bugged list? I've never run into this problem myself, and I currently use the program with around 500 mods, but that definitely sounds like something I could see happening, and would be something I'll need to fix if it can be reproduced. Any further info you could provide would help greatly, especially if you can remember exactly what actions in the program you were doing around the time it started failing. Also, if the .malist file itself got corrupted somehow I can see if I can fix that, if provided.
Sorry again that this occurred, I'll see what I can do on my end to resolve it. I'll also try to see if I can create a data logger for when the program screws up in the near future.
EDIT: I have added a debugger version of the program under the Optional Files that displays the console to show errors that occur during runtime. If you think you can recreate what you did to make this error occur (and are willing to), please try the debugger and tell me what it outputs, if anything.
Just happend to me too, tried everything to save, even used save as. I the end it has just overridden my modlist with an empty one and now like 6 hours of work are gone lol. Gonna go too sleep now.
Should've made a backup... Should've made a backup.......
I'm sorry that my program caused this, as it's the exact thing I wanted to avoid happening when I created this. I've tried to replicate this issue myself on my own side, but have not had any luck so far, and I've gotten no further information on the issue.
If you edit the .malist file with notepad and notice any text in it, there may still be data that can be salvaged, in which case you could send the file to me and I might be able to fix the file (emphasis on might). If the .malist is truly empty, however, then I don't believe there's anything I can do for it. I'm truly sorry again for this happening.
Don't worry I've got the issue again lol. BUT I have backups this time! (Yes I just restarted, still using your Program XD) And I tried opening the 'empty' file this time with notepad and yes, it is completely empty, but thanks for offering help!
I'm also using the console Version this time and have the log YAY
So the log says:
Exception in Tkinter callback Traceback (most recent call last): File "tkinter\__init__.py", line 1884, in __call__ File "ModlistArranger.py", line 629, in saveas_command File "ModlistArranger.py", line 617, in _save File "C:\Users\Edward\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 19, in encode UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode characters in position 34216-34218: character maps to <undefined>
Help would be appreceated XD (Btw. haven't closed the programm yet, so if there is a way to save my progress, that would be awesome)
Wow, thank you SO much for this! It's exactly what I needed to (potentially) solve the issue. I have just fixed the code thanks to your error report, and will be uploading it on here shortly. As to whether you can save your current progress, it SHOULD be possible if you delete any non-ASCII text in any of your mod descriptions, which is what I believe is causing the issue currently. This means delete any Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, or any other non-English or numerical text that you find. This is the only way for sure that you can save the data properly.
I'm sorry you had to go through this TWICE, but huge thanks again for helping me solve this problem, it showed me EXACTLY what went wrong. Even if you decide to stop using this in the future, you've been a big help!
If you DO decide to keep using this program, I will write a stickied post soon explaining something important you have to do to upgrade from 1.35 and below to the new 1.4.
It worked, I just had to delete the russian text from 4thUnknowns mods! I'm glad that I was able to help and thanks for the quick reply and update!
I will keep using your program and also keep reporting any bugs I find.
Btw. because I didn't want to lose my progress again (revert to a backup from hours ago) I left my PC running overnight, waiting for a reply and also opened every mod in my browser again XD (I now have one window whit 124 open tabs lol)
Also, is it possible to send someone, who also has the program, the .malist file and that way to sort of share a modlist. Essentially, does the linking to nexus work in that case?
Sorry that you had to go through all that, but man, you got some crazy commitment lol. Just FYI, my program doesn't break if you put your computer to sleep instead of leaving it on, for next time. I did it all the time when I was making my modlist lol.
Also, there shouldn't be any problems in sharing .malist files as long as both users have this program.
Edit: Also, since I forgot to mention it. As of version 1.4, there should be no problems leaving non-English characters in the descriptions now, so you don't have to delete non-English characters before saving anymore.
Thank you so much for the update! I didn't get a notification about the replies, so I unfortunately couldn't help troubleshoot, but I'm really glad that you found the answer anyway and were able to fix it. I appreciate it a lot :)
So when I open my modlist for the first time, Modlist Arranger just doesnt load the last 10-15 categories, there is space left, but they are invisible and I cant interact with them. The issue goes away, once I load a different (smaller) modlist and reload the big one. That happens every time, I open MA. Nothing big, just a minor inconvenience of having to "reload" the list. Btw. this also happens, if I load another, smaller list, first. I have to load my main list 2 times for it to "render" properly. It's fairly long, so I'm guessing, that's the issue.
I have seen this issue once before actually, but I have yet to find a way to properly fix it internally at this point, my apologies.
There was a way I was able to fix specific lists with this problem on the user's end though, but I don't quite remember how I had done it. Try moving the last category that is not invisible down until it is ends up at the bottom of the list and below the invisible categories (which should cause them to redraw themselves). You could then move that category back to its original position. Hopefully, this makes those categories appear correctly, and hopefully, saving the list at that point should make the list load correctly without this visual glitch the next time you load it.
If you happen to try this, please let me know if it works or not. If it doesn't, sorry for the inconvenience. Until one of my lists gets this issue again, this is all I can really offer.
sounds like a dream, however malwarebytes quarantined the entire file for finding "a trojan injector" in the folder which is worrisome https://blog.malwarebytes.com/detections/trojan-injector/
guessing your program contains some kind of commonly used script either similar to, or which hackers use to hijack other software? i'm an amateur programmer so i can rly only speculate how these things work, though other programs i've used that communicate with MO2 have not given me such a warning before. hopefully you can fix the false positives :)
That is indeed the issue here. Pyinstaller, which is what I use to compile the Python scripts of this program into an exe, is also apparently commonly used by hackers to compile their own Python scripts, and therefore has any exe's compiled with it flagged by certain antivirus software to be a trojan.
I've tried various solutions to solve this issue already, but every solution I've found hasn't worked so far, so unless I digitally sign the program (which requires money) or find another working solution, the false positives will have to stay. I do also have a warning about it in the description, but I should probably make it more visible. Either way, I mainly programmed this for myself anyway, so I don't really mind if this scares people off. Less work for me that way. :)
TLDR; The program indeed shows false positives on some antivirus, but nothing I've tried fixed it. Either use the program with good faith or give it a pass.
As good of an idea as that would be, I currently do not know of a way for me to retrieve MO2's modlist AS WELL as each mod's URL, which is necessary since my program relies on hooking each mod with a URL. The closest you could do is use this program's automatic multi-link grabber for nexus mods and copy each nexus URL in your modlist in order. At least that way you wouldn't have to paste each one. If that still proves to be too tedious, than I apologize, but that's allthat is possible at the moment.
I was idly thinking about this, and wonder if MO2's Mods folder might help. In that folder each mod has its Meta.ini file and the Nexus Mod ID number is listed in that Meta file. I'm no programmer so I can't think how to do anything with it. But offer it as an idea anyway!
That's actually an eye-opening observation. I have just spent the last two hours figuring out how to manipulate that metadata and believe I have successfully added an import MO2 command into Modlist Arranger. I will be uploading it shortly.
Cool! I'll give it a try thank you! And yes - it works! Oh - ran into a slight problem. I don't think it is critical as the software gets over it and works. I'm getting a DOS box error:
Spoiler:
Show
Exception in Tkinter callback Traceback (most recent call last): File "tkinter\__init__.py", line 1884, in __call__ File "ModlistArranger.py", line 761, in import_mo2_command File "configparser.py", line 781, in get File "configparser.py", line 1149, in _unify_values configparser.NoSectionError: No section: 'General'
As a minor suggestion it would be nice to be able to resize the two right-hand columns. The furthest goes off the screen. Hope I'm not missing something that does this!
That error means that one of the mods in your MO2 list doesn't have their meta.ini metadata set up properly for some reason. I didn't foresee that as an option. This probably means one of your mods didn't get placed into this program, though there's no indication of which one. I'll at least try and make it so it'll print the name of any mods this error happens to in a future update.
As for resizing the right-hand columns, as they're set up now, making them resizable would require a tediously large amount of work I don't really want to do, as I find the information in those columns non-essential, at least for me. I made the last column just large enough to fit Nexus (at least on my screen), and I'd recommend using a shorthand for custom sites. Even if Nexus does appear cut off for you though, there should still be enough to distinguish it, hopefully.
Edit: I can actually just set up any mods with improper/missing metadata as non-Nexus mods, so that should be a decent catch-all solution. I will still ALSO have it print ouf which mods have this issue, though, in case you need to find them. Also, I'd forgotten I set non-Nexus mods to be listed as 'Non-Nexus' in the last column, which would definitely be cut off. I'll instead set it to blank.
Nice! Thank you! The reporting is improved - I found which mod was the error. About the long time for MO2 imports. Might it be possible to have the version with the visual glitches? I have 2188 mods in my list and, well, I'd quite like my PC back! If I know it will look a mess while importing the MO2 stuff but it happens swiftly, I can live with that. I'm up to 580 after eight hours...
Oh yeah, sure. I hadn't figured on how the slow version would work with a modlist that large. I'll upload the quicker version as an optional file in a bit. Hopefully it'll process in a manageable amount of time. Let me know either way.
Any plans on putting that import feature you did for MO2 into an equivalent for VORTEX? Just curious. Not trying to get into a whole "MO2 is better" debate. VORTEX is just simpler for me to use at the moment.
Oh, no problem. I know in the back of my head I should be using MO2 because of the way I like to swap mods around. But I had a stroke a while back and VORTEX is just easier for me to follow and do things with. And now I'm too far down the rabbithole.
NOTE: As of version 1.21, inserting a mod while the site is unreachable by the program will show the wrong message, showing "Mod data unavailable" instead. While that is technically true while the nexusmods server is down for data collection, it might be a little misleading, so just thought I'd point it out.
EDIT: This problem has been fixed as of version 1.3
So I am playing around with this a bit to see how it works, and so far I am liking what I see. However, is there a way to add an additional column for NOTES or something like that? It would be nice to be able to jot down some necessary notes for the functionality of the mods, say if you have to add something to SkyrimPrefs.ini to make the mod work correctly. Even an additional row below it that automatically indents, or something of that nature. I tend to forget things I need to do.
Also, is it possible to add the ability to highlight a row in different colors? For example, red to indicate you have something you need to do to the mod to get it to work, yellow for espfe/esl's so you know they are light and don't take up a slot, blue for dependencies, etc? Just curious, since that is how I do things on my own typed out list. But this saves me a LOT of typing/cutting/pasting. Speaking of which, is there a way to add a copy/paste/undo function? I just deleted the wrong category because I have fumblefingers this morning. It would be nice if the category you were working on or selected remained highlighted, that way you wouldn't do stupid stuff like me.
Anyway, these are just suggestions, not demands. I like what I see so far, so of course now I want more. Take them with a grain of salt. I'm selfish and old, so I want stuff NOW.
EDIT: Sorry, I didn't see that the descriptions were editable (picture links are broken so I didn't notice and didn't go to the image tab). That will work for the NOTES. Highlighting and copy/past/undo would still be nice though.
EDIT 2: Damn. Sorry again. I'm really not exploring as well as I should be, apparantly. I can see the copy/cut/paste when right clicking on the editable desciption now. So my bad. It would still be nice to have an undo or highlighting capabilty, though. Until I find you already did that, too. Ooh, and drag and drop, since I apparently have issues getting things under the right category. And collapsing a single or multiple single categories as well as the collapsing all you already have. Sooner or later I'll stop adding things. I promise.
I'll look more into whether or not I can implement the things you're suggesting after I go to sleep, For now, though, I'll post some quick thoughts.
Highlighting with preset colors should be easy enough, and so should making things stay selected after a right click.
As for collapsing, currently I've disallowed multiple category selection because of issues I've run into, so there won't be multiple category collapsing until I resolve those. However, you can collapse or expand a single category by double clicking its name. I'll try and make that more obvious
Dragging and dropping categories would be difficult for me to implement, but I could give it a shot. And though the mods themselves can be dragged around from their index numbers, they won't move into other categories this way because of issues. Maybe I could try and get it working, though.
Copying/Pasting/Undoing anything that isn't text will be near-impossible for me at the moment without a ton of work, so that will probably be out of the question. Though undoing the very last thing you've done in the program MIGHT be within my abilities, so I'll look into that.
Anyway, that's what I have off the top of my head. I don't know how quickly I'll be able to get these changes out if I decide to do them, since I'm working on the incompatibility-checking feature someone else mentioned, but I'll try to get an update out soon. Other than that, thanks for trying it out and giving helpful feedback!
Thanks for the quick reply. I just tried double clicking on the title and that collapse works nicely. Probably my fault rather than yours for not noticing the directions. I'm the type of person that likes to jump in and do stuff, not ask directions, etc. I need to slow down and read everything, not just the parts I'm interested in. My wife says I'm like our dog with a squirrel. Always making noise, no attention span, and I have no idea what to do with it after I've caught it.
As for the rest, highlighting would be nice. The rest I can live without as I get more familiar with what I'm doing. They were just ideas that I had with no idea on how difficult they would be to implement.
Thank you for the neat tool. It's going to make maintaining my modlist sooo much easier.
I've added mod display highlighting to preset colors in the latest version. There are only 4 other colors to choose from at the moment, but I could add more later. Hope that helps for now, though!
Thanks for the quick update. I think I'll used a light color to indicate espfe/esl/no esp files. Always bothers me the trouble I have to go through to identify which are lights just from staring at a list, without having to look some of them up. Especially when I'm merging mods that don't really need to be. Vortex helps some, but some modders don't exactly make their esp filenames relevant to the modname.Again, thanks for the update.
Love the idea (using excel to keep track of my mods today) but it wwill not work for me. Running the .exe and pasting a modlink... nothing. What could it be? Running Windows 10.
Oh, I believe I've screwed something up in the latest version. I'll fix it as soon as possible. Thanks for letting me know, and sorry for the inconvenience!
To anyone that has downloaded or is downloading version 1.1, there is a fatal error that causes the program to not function correctly. Please download the latest version, version 1.11, for the fixed program.
51 comments
To save an .malist to use UTF-8 encoding (on Windows 10 at least):
1) Open any older .malist files in Notepad.
2) In the top left, select File>Save As...
3) Set the File name to whatever you want, then look for the "Encoding:" drop down menu in the bottom right (it should be left of the Save button)
4) Select "UTF-8" from the Encoding drop-down menu.
5) Save the file
After doing this, your file should open properly in versions 1.4 and above.
Sorry again that this occurred, I'll see what I can do on my end to resolve it. I'll also try to see if I can create a data logger for when the program screws up in the near future.
EDIT: I have added a debugger version of the program under the Optional Files that displays the console to show errors that occur during runtime. If you think you can recreate what you did to make this error occur (and are willing to), please try the debugger and tell me what it outputs, if anything.
I the end it has just overridden my modlist with an empty one and now like 6 hours of work are gone lol.
Gonna go too sleep now.
Should've made a backup...
Should've made a backup.......
If you edit the .malist file with notepad and notice any text in it, there may still be data that can be salvaged, in which case you could send the file to me and I might be able to fix the file (emphasis on might). If the .malist is truly empty, however, then I don't believe there's anything I can do for it. I'm truly sorry again for this happening.
BUT I have backups this time! (Yes I just restarted, still using your Program XD)
And I tried opening the 'empty' file this time with notepad and yes, it is completely empty, but thanks for offering help!
I'm also using the console Version this time and have the log YAY
So the log says:
Exception in Tkinter callback
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "tkinter\__init__.py", line 1884, in __call__
File "ModlistArranger.py", line 629, in saveas_command
File "ModlistArranger.py", line 617, in _save
File "C:\Users\Edward\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 19, in encode
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode characters in position 34216-34218: character maps to <undefined>
Help would be appreceated XD
(Btw. haven't closed the programm yet, so if there is a way to save my progress, that would be awesome)
I'm sorry you had to go through this TWICE, but huge thanks again for helping me solve this problem, it showed me EXACTLY what went wrong. Even if you decide to stop using this in the future, you've been a big help!
If you DO decide to keep using this program, I will write a stickied post soon explaining something important you have to do to upgrade from 1.35 and below to the new 1.4.
I'm glad that I was able to help and thanks for the quick reply and update!
I will keep using your program and also keep reporting any bugs I find.
Btw. because I didn't want to lose my progress again (revert to a backup from hours ago) I left my PC running overnight, waiting for a reply and also opened every mod in my browser again XD (I now have one window whit 124 open tabs lol)
Also, is it possible to send someone, who also has the program, the .malist file and that way to sort of share a modlist. Essentially, does the linking to nexus work in that case?
Also, there shouldn't be any problems in sharing .malist files as long as both users have this program.
Edit: Also, since I forgot to mention it. As of version 1.4, there should be no problems leaving non-English characters in the descriptions now, so you don't have to delete non-English characters before saving anymore.
Btw. this also happens, if I load another, smaller list, first. I have to load my main list 2 times for it to "render" properly.
It's fairly long, so I'm guessing, that's the issue.
There was a way I was able to fix specific lists with this problem on the user's end though, but I don't quite remember how I had done it. Try moving the last category that is not invisible down until it is ends up at the bottom of the list and below the invisible categories (which should cause them to redraw themselves). You could then move that category back to its original position. Hopefully, this makes those categories appear correctly, and hopefully, saving the list at that point should make the list load correctly without this visual glitch the next time you load it.
If you happen to try this, please let me know if it works or not. If it doesn't, sorry for the inconvenience. Until one of my lists gets this issue again, this is all I can really offer.
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/detections/trojan-injector/
guessing your program contains some kind of commonly used script either similar to, or which hackers use to hijack other software? i'm an amateur programmer so i can rly only speculate how these things work, though other programs i've used that communicate with MO2 have not given me such a warning before. hopefully you can fix the false positives :)
I've tried various solutions to solve this issue already, but every solution I've found hasn't worked so far, so unless I digitally sign the program (which requires money) or find another working solution, the false positives will have to stay. I do also have a warning about it in the description, but I should probably make it more visible. Either way, I mainly programmed this for myself anyway, so I don't really mind if this scares people off. Less work for me that way. :)
TLDR; The program indeed shows false positives on some antivirus, but nothing I've tried fixed it. Either use the program with good faith or give it a pass.
Thank you very much for the help!
Oh - ran into a slight problem. I don't think it is critical as the software gets over it and works. I'm getting a DOS box error:
Exception in Tkinter callback
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "tkinter\__init__.py", line 1884, in __call__
File "ModlistArranger.py", line 761, in import_mo2_command
File "configparser.py", line 781, in get
File "configparser.py", line 1149, in _unify_values
configparser.NoSectionError: No section: 'General'
As a minor suggestion it would be nice to be able to resize the two right-hand columns. The furthest goes off the screen. Hope I'm not missing something that does this!
As for resizing the right-hand columns, as they're set up now, making them resizable would require a tediously large amount of work I don't really want to do, as I find the information in those columns non-essential, at least for me. I made the last column just large enough to fit Nexus (at least on my screen), and I'd recommend using a shorthand for custom sites. Even if Nexus does appear cut off for you though, there should still be enough to distinguish it, hopefully.
Edit: I can actually just set up any mods with improper/missing metadata as non-Nexus mods, so that should be a decent catch-all solution. I will still ALSO have it print ouf which mods have this issue, though, in case you need to find them. Also, I'd forgotten I set non-Nexus mods to be listed as 'Non-Nexus' in the last column, which would definitely be cut off. I'll instead set it to blank.
About the long time for MO2 imports. Might it be possible to have the version with the visual glitches? I have 2188 mods in my list and, well, I'd quite like my PC back! If I know it will look a mess while importing the MO2 stuff but it happens swiftly, I can live with that.
I'm up to 580 after eight hours...
EDIT: This problem has been fixed as of version 1.3
Also, is it possible to add the ability to highlight a row in different colors? For example, red to indicate you have something you need to do to the mod to get it to work, yellow for espfe/esl's so you know they are light and don't take up a slot, blue for dependencies, etc? Just curious, since that is how I do things on my own typed out list. But this saves me a LOT of typing/cutting/pasting. Speaking of which, is there a way to add a copy/paste/undo function? I just deleted the wrong category because I have fumblefingers this morning. It would be nice if the category you were working on or selected remained highlighted, that way you wouldn't do stupid stuff like me.
Anyway, these are just suggestions, not demands. I like what I see so far, so of course now I want more.
EDIT: Sorry, I didn't see that the descriptions were editable (picture links are broken so I didn't notice and didn't go to the image tab). That will work for the NOTES. Highlighting and copy/past/undo would still be nice though.
EDIT 2: Damn. Sorry again. I'm really not exploring as well as I should be, apparantly. I can see the copy/cut/paste when right clicking on the editable desciption now. So my bad. It would still be nice to have an undo or highlighting capabilty, though. Until I find you already did that, too.
Anyway, that's what I have off the top of my head. I don't know how quickly I'll be able to get these changes out if I decide to do them, since I'm working on the incompatibility-checking feature someone else mentioned, but I'll try to get an update out soon. Other than that, thanks for trying it out and giving helpful feedback!
As for the rest, highlighting would be nice. The rest I can live without as I get more familiar with what I'm doing. They were just ideas that I had with no idea on how difficult they would be to implement.
Thank you for the neat tool. It's going to make maintaining my modlist sooo much easier.
Running the .exe and pasting a modlink... nothing.
What could it be? Running Windows 10.