/copylayout really means /restorelayout?

I've never understood the UI layout save/copy in EQ. I just saw a post by a dev telling someone to /copylayout to restore their layout.

No wonder it has never made sense to me. I see "Copy" layout and I assume it is saving/copying the current layout. You know, like every other Windows program that exists, as well as Windows itself. But it looks like (correct me if I'm wrong) that in EQ copying a layout means restoring an old layout over your current one.

Which is called normally called restoring or loading.

So, is this how it is or am I misunderstanding again? If I'm right, I'm baffled how this exists. Who created this disaster of UI design and who else never noticed it needed to be fixed?

In this case the changes that you are seeing on your screen have not yet been saved to the ui settings file which means that in this case you are just restoring the setting from the file.

Generally the copy layout functionality is used when you want the same UI setup on a character to match the layout of a different character that you have set up on the computer you are at. So the name fits.

It's only when things break does the functionality get used for the same character. Most often, when the UI layout of your character appears "new".

I'm just wondering...how do you not know about this though?

I have no idea how you could possibly have thought the way you did. It means exactly what it says, it copies an existing file to your current UI build. That's on you.

Eh, it’s understandable. When you copy a file, it doesn’t paste it. Minor issue, but I’d agree with Fanra “Copy Layout” is ambiguous.

Again, it’s minor but the word copy has multiple meanings.

One would first have to understand what it's copying
And that is that it is copying the last saved layout

Question now is...when does it save..does it save every few minutes automatically, upon logout?

And I wish it really saved the current layout. For me, it is always a bit off and it has never gotten the extended target window right. It does help, but it could be way better.

I think it is when you zone or camp out (not using /exit, force quit, or similar methods)

I wish I could have a fixxed size, instead of accidently change it

There's copy and there is paste. Copy does not normally mean paste. What EQ does with /copylayout is paste, not copy.

If you get a video game which autosaves and you want to go back to a previous game you don't pick the previous saved game file and choose "Copy". You pick "Load".

EQ is not copying an existing file to your current UI build, it is overwriting (pasting) an existing file over your current build.

EQ autosaves UI layouts. When you want to use an autosaved UI layout, you want to "Load" it or "Paste it" over the current UI. Copy means make a copy, as in I want a backup copy somewhere. I also thought it meant copy your current UI layout.

I have no idea how you could possibly think that copy means paste. In Windows "Copy" and "Paste" (as well as every single video game I've ever played) are not the same thing.

Copy = make a copy (as in autosaving something)
Paste = put the copy somewhere, overwriting if necessary (as in overwriting your current UI with another (saved) copy)
Load = What this is doing, it is loading a saved copy.

dictionary.com:

• "Copy" - Computers. an exact duplicate of a file, program, etc.:
• "Paste" - Computers. to insert (copied text, images, etc.) into a file.
• "Load" - Computers. to make (an aspect of a program or website) visible, audible, playable, or otherwise executable:

I love your wiki and think you do great things for the community. But you've sure picked a strange hill to die on with EQ.

Please never use dictionary.com in any argument ever again. It's pedantic. And quite often just wrong or at the very least, misleading. Older English teachers across the world are nodding in agreement with me on this.

The copy layout has been on the Options window front tab for as long as I can remember...an awful long time by any measure. The statute of limitations has long expired for a change. Changing the wording at this point will simply confuse folks. For only the gain of 1 person. Literally 1 person.

The secondary window allows you to select certain options from a list of possible saved layouts and hit copy. Since there is no option to select where the copy goes, 99.999% of EQ players seem to be able to figure out that you are copying elements TO your current UI layout.

BTW, no one ever uses paste in general computer vernacular. I don't paste an email to someone else. I copy them. People seem to be okay understanding that. Even on a Microsoft Windows computer.

You do great work for the EQ community. This is not one of those things.

The naming is very misleading. It does copy and paste the layout from another character onto the current character. And just ignore the stupid people.

It could be that the misleading is in how many characters you can see so the dev that designed the wording used /copy instead of something more descriptive. Coding only allows so many characters and is sometimes short versioned for space in the descriptor. Using /transfer or something else would probably have confused more players.

I really don't get how this is confusing

I think if you don't make new characters much then one is not aware that this is a pop up box that is offered as soon as you zone into Crescent Reach or hometown. Without going thru window options.

Since a new character does not have a saved layout yet then that would indicate those in the box are ones you can use or copy to this character.

So, if your only experience of this is bringing up and using the in game option then I can see how you might think that.

Edit it worked to fix the recent patch issue, don't forget to check the boxes below the window

As CatsPaws mentions above, if you don't do much with multiple accounts/characters/systems (which I don't think you do) it's not a feature you would use much. Personally I have used it a fair amount. I think the main reason for it existing is to copy a UI layout from one character to another... as in, I have a standard UI layout that I use for all my characters/accounts. If I log in a account/character on a different system or log in a character I haven't logged in since forever, and I don't want to manually set up their UI how I want it, I can use this feature to copy (and by your definitions I guess it is more a copy/paste) a layout from another character. For this functionality it makes perfect sense (at least to me).

In the current scenario though (I think), where you want to restore a layout for a different resolution or maybe in this case (I'm not quite up to speed yet) from a file that was previously saved on logout but hasn't been saved over yet... the word 'Copy' doesn't make as much sense... but I also don't think doing this is what this feature was originally meant to do. It's more like you are using it as a tool to work around something that it works for, but not really designed for.....

ie. kind of like using a table knife as a screwdriver.

I'm not "dying on this hill". I just think that it is a poorly worded, non intuitive, non standard UI element.

Obviously, after years on not using it and not understanding it, I think I understand it now. You can go on about how my argument is poorly made, using dictionary.com is a bad choice, etc.

None of that matters. Whether I make a poor argument or not, it is a bad design that violates standard usage of how the idea of loading a saved UI layout works. When you load a UI (not the layout but a custom UI) it uses the term "Load", because that is what you do. You don't "Copy" when you "Load" your UI, you load it. The same is true of layouts.

But, as I said, I'm not going to "die on this hill". If people want to ignore my opinion on this, fine. I never expected to "win" this battle, as people don't like change, even to fix broken things.

As for my wiki and other contributions to the EQ community, none of that has anything to do with my thread here. Bringing up, "Well, you have done a lot of good but you are wrong here", is really damning with faint praise. That is a reverse ad hominem fallacy. It doesn't matter who I am. All that matters is my point. Either it is correct or not.

I'm done here with this thread. Goodbye.

Something in EQ is non standard from typical 2024 computing? Oh my, stop the presses!

Everquest is pretty old. Pretty sure it came out before computers were invented. If you go back to the days of Olde English, when Everquest was in its prime, you will find that Copy and Load were synonyms. Like "Come Barclay, let us copy this batch of cabbages into yon Barrel"

Been a while since I've played around with englisc, but it might come out more as, "Cume, Barclay, læt us geefenlæcan þisne hlot of cawel into þæt berel." This is, of course, a word for word translation, ignoring proper englisc sentence structure.