Is there a marker limit in Director MX 2004?

Question

I'm using Director MX 2004, and I have a very large project with lots of markers. Markers have quite long names too. Now I'm having some weird behavior when inputting new markers and naming them... I have tried many times to add new markers, but for some reason as soon as I move a newly added marker the name of the marker goes empty, and the name is added to the previous marker. For example, if I have a marker called "Markername 1" and I add a new marker with a name "Markername 2" and then move the marker with "Markername 2", it loses its name and the first marker is called "Markername 1Markername 2"... is there some limits in markers or what could cause this weird behavior?

Answer 1

Chunick wrote:
Director is so much more powerful than laying stuff out on the timeline over and over, project after project. I would challenge you to explore Lingo a bit more and learn what possibilities it opens up to make your projects of 3000-4000 labels much easier. We, as humans are natural pattern seekers, and that's where programming can help the most. If we can see the pattern - the repetition - then there's usually code that we can write that gets rid of the manual layout of something of that scale that you describe so that you'd just have to create a few markers and have the code dynamically generate the layout from the data/assets.
So, have fun with Director and explore... to steal from Mark, "Keep on Learnin'".
WOW. This sort of reply is a perfect example of why so many long-time Director users like myself rarely post, but instead just roll our eyes and walk away. The hubris in this last comment is amazing.
Let's review the thread. Someone posts that they are having problems adding new markers. You and both Mark responded. FWIW, I also would recommend the list solution that substitutes the actual name for a more systematic labeling method, so that's a great and helpful idea. But your first post, that noboby has ever experienced this over the last nine years, is incorrect. I've complained about the "marker bug" on numerous occasions over the years, probably dating back to MX, though I guess everyone just ignored the comment. So I chime in on this thread that I have, in fact, numerous large movies that exhibit the erratic label issues.Then comes your amazing reply to my comment about the unpredictable bug, which could be summarized as "My vision for Director involves templates, and anyone who deviates from my vision must be a moron who is completely ignorant of the complexity of Director."
LOL
So if you get your wish, will the stage of D12 would be locked down at 10 frames for the rest of us? Just because you can't step outside of the box you've put yourself in and EVER see the need for a movie with more than a handful of frames, does that imply that every other serious Director user has to limit themsleves with those same constraints?
I don't disagree with you that the power of Director is in creating an underlying architecture that allows sophisticated interactions to be used over and over with minimal fuss at the individual screen level. I haven't written a "go to" command in years! Why do you assume that I spend all my time "laying stuff on the timeline"? What is amazing is that you make these sweeping generalizations about every other user, based only on your initial programming biases, even when you have no idea of the complexity of my project or its intended use.
Like you, the bulk of my plumbing when setting up this large number of screens involves submitting (and cleaning up) large, complex data arrays (AKA - lists of lists). I have over 30,000 lines of Lingo for these input lists alone, which reference the 150,000 lines of lingo for my generic interactions. And of course this all ties in to a huge local DB, where I have over 500,000 fields, and the user generates another 10,000 new entries in the DB during their 100+ hours spent in the application.
But what does this "plumbing" have to do with markers? My vision for reusable code is to handle the hard stuff out of sight, and allow me to quickly create unique screen markers that have a "hand crafted" feel to every screen. I do this not because templates are beyond my conceptual grasp, but rather because I have rejected the idea of templates, for my projects, as creative "laziness". Easy to implement, but boring, tedious, and visually unappealing, Sure, templates may work for many other applications, especially those where the user experience is not so important. But in my case, where each projects involves about 40,000 hours of work gathering unique materials and constructing them into an interactive, it flies in the face of the very nature of the project itself. My users will spend 2-3 hours per week in my application, for an entire year. Why should I bore them more than necessary, just because I want to save 200 hours of layout on a 40,000 hour project? Each of my projects, over their lifetime, will have over 5 million hours of user time spent inside them. I'm currrently working on one that will have 10 times that amount. Since many labels will have users spending over 10,000 hours looking / interacting with it, my question is not "how can I save 5 minutes of layout/programming time per screen', but rather "is this screen visually, technically, and pedagogically worth thousands of user hours?"
So I use markers, in combination with my code, to reject the template mold, allowing me to quickly lay a few simple elements on each screen and create a customized, hand crafted look and feel to the entire experience. It is a very different approach than yours, and I'm glad you are happy with your view of the interactive world. But as for me, I use Director precisely because itt is possible to mix a powerful scripting environment, that reaches deep into the OS, with the ability to quickly customize each screen/label and provide an appealing visual experience for the user.
While you think I should "explore Lingo a bit more and learn what possibilities it opens up", I'd suggest you learn to put aside your predetermined solutions to problems that you have not even encountered yet. Who knows where new creative ideas will take you...