Apparent incompatibility of OXPs not detected

[readyready15728]

Having gotten past my difficulty with installing OXPs (thanks) I ran into something that seemed suspicious but wasn't detected as a source of incompatibility by Oolite. I have Galaxy Names 1.0 and Distant Realms 1.1 installed and figured they might be incompatible. Here is the Config/descriptions.plist from Galaxy Names:

{
        // Long Range Chart Screen
        // The chart names in this demonstration reputedly originated in the Acorn Archimedes version of Elite.

        // "long-range-chart-title-d"   = "Long Range Chart %d";
        "long-range-chart-title-0"              = "Long Range Chart: Santaari";
        "long-range-chart-title-1"              = "Long Range Chart: Colesque";
        "long-range-chart-title-2"              = "Long Range Chart: Lara’tan";
        "long-range-chart-title-3"              = "Long Range Chart: Angiana";
        "long-range-chart-title-4"              = "Long Range Chart: Proximus";
        "long-range-chart-title-5"              = "Long Range Chart: Solans";
        "long-range-chart-title-6"              = "Long Range Chart: Jaftra";
        "long-range-chart-title-7"              = "Long Range Chart: Xrata";
        "long-range-chart-title-8"              = "Long Range Chart: Transoresratia";
}

Config/descriptions.plist for Distant Realms is much longer but here is the relevant excerpt:

        // Long Range Chart Screen

        "long-range-chart-title-d"              = "Galactic Chart %d";

        // The chart names here reputedly originated in the Acorn Archimedes version of Elite.

        "long-range-chart-title-0"              = "Galactic Chart, Santaari Sector";
        "long-range-chart-title-1"              = "Sector 2: Colesque";
        "long-range-chart-title-2"              = "Sector 3: Lara’tan";
        "long-range-chart-title-3"              = "Sector 4: Angiana";
        "long-range-chart-title-4"              = "Sector 5: Proximus";
        "long-range-chart-title-5"              = "Sector 6: Solans";
        "long-range-chart-title-6"              = "Sector 7: Jaftra";
        "long-range-chart-title-7"              = "Sector 8: Xrata";
        "long-range-chart-title-8"              = "Sector 9: Transoresratia";

The explicitly numbered chart titles conflict and presumably which one overrides is a matter of loading order (alphabetical I would guess). Does Oolite not consider a fairly cosmetic conflict to be serious or should the behavior change?

[AnotherCommander]

This is by design. If more than one OXPs change the exact same property, then the one that gets loaded last wins. It would be quite extreme trying to track every single property an OXP can change in the game and do that for all OXPs to boot. I guess a notification that OXPs are conflicting would be nice, but I am not convinced yet that the effort required justifies the result.

This is why it is important that OXP creators take the time to tag any known incompatibilities with other OXPs in their creation's manifest file. It is also a reason why we tell people to load OXPs one by one and not in batches. It is easy to spot such incompatibilities if you don't load everything in one go. And finally, it is the reason why quite a few OXPs start their filename with ZZZZ[OXPName], to ensure that they get loaded last and override any others. Having said that, the alphabetical order is usually honored (at least for Linux and Windows) but it can't be always guaranteed for all OSs or even for different versions of the same OS.