object name lenght

Looks like an object name in Blender is limited to 21 characters. Is it somehow possible to use longer names and why such limit exists?

21 characters are too short for you?
I think it would be time to reduce the length again to
8+3
like in ancient cpm/ms-dos times.

21 characters are really a lot and are a lot more than those
old naming restrictions.

Pull the blender source-code and change the limit, change it for
all structures and forget about any usage for old blender-2.49.

It is a bit more work to think about a good naming and for some
the computer-industry try to create desktops, where no more any
special names are needed. Why to know/decide where to store
some information? Why to know/decide how it is stored? In one
file? Split over multiple directories? Or using some kind of database?
Thats easy, you wont need any naming for your informations, they
are on your desktop and if not … they might not be worth any more…?

I hope you get the point, if not… do you really believe there will never be
any limitations? Hell, the 2.000 gigabyte-disk is full again, … why is it so small?
;-))

21 characters are too short for you?
This was a huge disappointment for me. The when the devs created 2.59 that they did not extend the name length. 21 characters is not really enough. Other packages support much longer names. I create a lot of scripts that use name to identify objects that are being managed. So I have to write special routines to make sure I never exceed 21 characters. Once I put in a special token to identifiy the object and then add a number to it, I have lost about 5-8 characters doing that. So I am left with maybe 10-12 characters for actually identifying my object. I like readable names I think it improves workflow when you are sharing a scene. If I hand you a scene and it has an object that is named “movable_bracket”. You know what it is/does. But if I hand you a scene with a name like “mv_brk” you are less likely to get it immediately.

We need at lest 256 characters IMHO.

@Atom: Why limit to 256?
That is much too short!
Even my old vi can handle longer lines!

Maybe its necessary to blow up the forum-width too, thats only around 100 chars,
why that limit?


11111111111111222222222222222222222223333333333333333333333333444444444444444444444444444555555555555555555555666666666666666666677777777777777778888888888888888999999999999999999999999990000000000000000000000000000000 ----------why stop writing .. i want to write more than 256 chars in one line, there should be no problem for people to read it ..  i want it in this way and anyone else who think it has to be shorter is dumb and building limits and blocking the evolution ... ... to ?? ;-))

You did read to the end of the line?

At the moment it is still possible to open blender-2.5x blend-files with blender-2.49 and it wont crash. Ok, animations and some things might be lost, but for the work with meshes its still very usefull.
Now think about your wonderfull long names … what will happen to blender-2.49?
And why is “M_” at the front of a name not enough to mark it as a “movable” thing?

yes, i am too old, i am still to much used to such short things like etc, var, sys, dev, mnt, bin, lib, usr, tmp, …
and i dont want to rename all to long self-explaining names best with the translation to the local language of the user.
RMB? LMB? MMB? … what should these dumb shortcuts be?

gg^^

edit: you are fully right, the new 2.000 gigabyte harddisk was a real frustrating thing, it was too quick filled …

that silly name length restriction really makes it a pain to import assets from other packages
long names would be especially useful for modding communities that want to use Blender for editing assets… or you want to force all gaming studios to use 21 characters to identify their meshes and materials?
Is backwards compatibility to 2.49 (loading 2.5x file in 2.49) really worth having crappy short name restrictions in versions to follow?

believe this has been change in 2.62

see change logs for lenght
max is 64 now i think

salutations

uh… ye, it is mentioned there… 63 chars to use + 1 for zero-separator
thanks for pointing this out, I wouldn’t notice it otherwise…
link to change: http://projects.blender.org/scm/viewvc.php?view=rev&root=bf-blender&revision=43283

ok did you see anything about the geometry command for making mesh?

i mean it’s gone
but has this been replace by another way may be ?

thanks