Could you expand the functionality of the `LoadSystemNotes()` function to allow loading from another character?

One of the biggest struggles for plugins like DroidButtons, any of the multiple asteroid tracker plugins, or others that store data in the SystemNotes, is being able to share that information between characters. This could be especially burdensome on players, who either have to recreate the information or manually mange their files between character sessions.

I've been able to create something similar through wrappers I've written, but they have a big problem in that if something goes wrong it is hard to recover from.

If the `LoadSystemNotes()` function could be expanded to allow specifying a character, it would simplify the entire process and reduce the possibility of errors.

I really don't love people using System Notes to store plugin data. I understand why it evolved this way, and there have been limited alternatives, but it's going to become increasingly unwieldy.

There's the prior discussion (you had raised) of a plugin file format, as well as Luxen's earlier thread.

Likely this would take the shape of some kind of virtualized storage call that we would bound with our own artificial limitations/constraints along with background-threaded access in some performant way (like a memory mapped file).

I recognize that there hasn't been much movement on the prior requests around storage enhancements, but expanding the current ugly hack to make it "more convenient" doesn't really make a lot of sense, when we could probably put the same amount of time into making something new that would have better long-term potential.

But, one way or the other, having capabilities of a plugin to load previously-stored client-side data pertaining to another character from the same account, on the current client-install, is probably reasonable. But, we'll likely limit it to that (within the same account), as there's still the prospect of people playing shared or public machines (college computer labs, internet cafes, families sharing a computer, etc).

I would add that even if plugins weren't using them in the way they do, sharing VO created system notes could still be beneficial. Assuming you've gone around and made extensive notes, that's something you'd probably want to be able to share as well.

I mean, we could simply make System Notes account-wide instead of per-character? Old character-specific notes could be retained and just be unused, but players could manually copy or rename them to a new account-based filename format, for now?

but players could manually copy or rename them to a new account-based filename format

The only issue (afaik) with this is that android pilots who have had their devices updated to android 13 might not be able to access their files at all. Implementation of Google's latest folder restrictions of /android/data seem to be hit or miss.

also, I can't verify, but I think someone on iOS said they can't access their <vo>/settings folder using iTunes?