Question for Frederik re. Formula downloads

Frederik, I wonder if you can comment on the following situation which has happened to me just recently...

Firstly, I'm in the habit of always saving my image parameters "with formulas" to cover situations where algorithms get deleted or altered and to avoid my designs being "broken" by these actions.

Last year I made a fractal image that used a colouring algorithm from om.ucl. Since then that particular colouring has been deleted from om.ucl (I've contacted the author about this and he may or may not correct the matter, but this is not the point I wish to make).

Recently I opened my saved image and UF dutifully saved the now "missing" colouring in a separate om.ucl file in my Ultra Fractal 5\Formulas folder.

All well and good, I know about this behaviour, BUT!... now when I go to update my formula files UF will not update the main om.ucl in Ultra Fractal 5\Formulas\Public

This is a typical instance of what is happening as per UF's log:

; Formula update log on 09/08/2017 15:50:46:

empty.txt [replaced]
jam3.ufm [replaced]
om.ufm [replaced]

; Files not updated because they are already installed, but not in the public formula folder:
om.ucl

Now, I know that I can probably just delete the extra om.ucl that UF saved for me and it would not be a problem for me but my question is: Why can't UF just go ahead and save the main file in the Public folder as usual? Is it really necessary to forbid the update because another file of that name has been written somewhere else?

^bump ^
Hoping Frederik will see this...

Sorry I missed your earlier post! UF saves the formula from your parameter file in the Formulas folder because the Public subfolder is reserved for formulas downloaded from the public database. Next, when updating the formulas, UF doesn't want to install a second om.ucl file because when looking for a formula, it will just pick the first file it finds. You don't want two copies of the same file in your formula library. This is mainly intended for formula authors, so updating the formulas never overwrites your own copy of your files.

So what to do? You could rename your private copy of om.ucl to say om_missing.ucl, and update your parameter sets to reference that file instead.

The main takeaway is that authors should never remove formulas from the public database.

Thanks for your reply and no worries, I guessed you might have missed it.

So there's no possibility of getting UF to only examine the Public folder when updating, then?
(ignoring any other files/folders elsewhere in \Formulas where authors might have their files)

I'm just curious as to whether any change in behaviour can be effected. If it can't be done or is undesirable then that's fine, it is just a small inconvenience that probably doesn't bother too many people.

The main takeaway is that authors should never remove formulas from the public database.

Ha ha, too true! But it does happen now and again, hence my "Save with formulas" habit. I've recovered several "broken" images this way over the years so it's a really good facility to have!!!

Thanks for all your efforts with UF. I still enjoy it immensely and am looking forward to UF6!