topic Re: PMK file name length limit? in Documentation

PMK file name length limit?

TomWaltz — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 16:02:46 GMT

For some reason, our PMK files truncate to be 32 characters (including the ".pmk").

Is this intentional by Graphisoft?

It wasn't so bad in the days before Title Types in Plotmaker, but now it's really a hassle. Bad enough we have to mask out our file extensions all the time... now we can't call them what we want?

Mac 10.3.1, Archicad 8.1

Thanks!

Re: PMK file name length limit?

Djordje — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 20:02:57 GMT

knacad wrote:
For some reason, our PMK files truncate to be 32 characters (including the ".pmk").

AFAIK this is a backward compatibility limitation.

Re: PMK file name length limit?

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 09:25:06 GMT

Djordje wrote:
AFAIK this is a backward compatibility limitation.

With these kind of explanation, PC users would still be using file names made of 8 characters !

Sorry, but the name length limitation in EVERY file that AC or PM uses is really annoying (even external bitmap files must follow this rule !!!). When I started using AC I asked why the file name had to be this short, and I was said that this was a Mac compatibility problem...

Re: PMK file name length limit?

Djordje — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:43:03 GMT

Geoffroy wrote:
Djordje wrote:
AFAIK this is a backward compatibility limitation.
With these kind of explanation, PC users would still be using file names made of 8 characters !

Not since the NT ... but you still have to have the extension.

Sorry, but the name length limitation in EVERY file that AC or PM uses is really annoying (even external bitmap files must follow this rule !!!). When I started using AC I asked why the file name had to be this short, and I was said that this was a Mac compatibility problem...

Agreed; I also have been told that it is a Mac backwards compatibility problem. All I know about it.

Re: PMK file name length limit?

Miquel Garcia — Fri, 12 Dec 2003 01:51:14 GMT

Djordje wrote:
Agreed; I also have been told that it is a Mac backwards compatibility problem. All I know about it.

32 characters was a limitation of the OS previous to OSX. With OSX you can have a title up to 256 characters (I don't know if including extension, but really it does'nt matter)

Re: PMK file name length limit?

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Dec 2003 04:44:34 GMT

For what it's worth, the Mac OS 9 (and previous) limitation was 31 characters. For PC compatibilty that meant 27 characters for the file name to allow for the four character extension. Once upon a time 31 characters seemed luxurious compared to to 8 character limit in DOS and Windows.

I assume the residual limitations will be flushed out shortly now that OS9 support has been dropped.

I think the current limit is 255 characters in both Mac OSX and Windows since 95/NT4.

Re: PMK file name length limit?

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Dec 2003 05:11:40 GMT

Oh, one more thing...

The length limitation can be avoided by linking directly to the plan. This also gets rid of the .pmk in the <DRAWINGNAME>.

I was a hold out on the direct linking thing through all three revs of AC8.0/PM3.0. There were too many problems early on, so I waited until AC8.1/PM3.1 to try it again and have been very happy since. It seems that Graphisoft went to such lengths to fix what was wrong with this new feature that it is now consistently superior to the the old way.