thank you for this!

@mohard - you're welcome. I've added a link to yours as an alternative that people may want to consider. :)

Well, I didn't expect publishing mods to be that easy, but it was, so here it is: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2920484492 for anybody interested.

Added links to your mods over there.

Thanks @Dawnmist for the inspiration and @GoarillaxJax for the clarifications!

@mohard - go for it. I don't want to be expanding the permits myself as I'm trying to keep within the original clothing bulk limits. You're very welcome to provide the altered limits as another mod, it'll give people choice about how they'd prefer to deal with the situation. :)

@Dawnmits I ran a fort with some changes to mittens to see if it's possible to work around the original issue without removing any valid vanilla combinations.

The changes:
* [LAYER_SIZE:20] (+5 - needed to stop them from wearing too many mittens at once) ((could actually be +10 as well, to be consistent with permit increase))
* [LAYER_PERMIT:30] (+10, needed to fit gloves+gauntlets underneath which are 10+20)

This seems to work out very well. Military dwarves walk around wearing all three. Civilian dwarves in gloves+mittens. No vanilla combination should be lost, since no SHAPED was added. No other non-vanilla combination should be added, I think.

I'll swamp the fort in even more gloves and mittens and let it run for a few more years to see if nothing weird pops up. Some more forts with an artificial scarcity of gloves and/or mittens could also be run to find out other corner cases.

I may even decide to create a separate mod for it if I have the time over the weekend.

So, with gloves & gauntlets shaped, we lose the following vanilla combinations:
* gloves + gloves + mittens
* gloves + gauntlets

If it were changed to gauntlets + mittens being shaped, we'd only lose one vanilla combination:
* gauntlets + mittens.

Given that, I think it better to change to making mittens shaped so that more of the valid vanilla combinations are possible, while I think about whether there is anything else that could be done.

@GoarillaxJax - thank you very much for clarifying that, as I'd found the wiki information confusing. :)

The question then becomes what is the correct way to address the issue. This works, but as I said in the description it comes at a cost. I'd love to fix it in a way that permits all normal vanilla combinations while still ensuring that they take either their gloves or their mittens off when putting their gauntlets on and without violating the original bulk rules. I'll think more about it, and see if I can get a better end result.

So @GorillaxJax, I wonder what would happen if mittens' permit was changed to 30, without changing anything wrt SHAPED.

Then it would allow them to wear those setups, as far as I understand:
1) gloves + gloves (as in vanilla)
2) gloves + mittens (as in vanilla)
3) gloves + gauntlets + mittens (additionally)

and also the slightly weird, but maybe acceptable:
3) gloves + gloves + mittens (additionally)

LMK if I've missed something. I'll also try running a few live tests in my fort.

@dawnmist from the wiki

"Permit refers to the maximum allowable size of items equipped on the <b>same or lower level<b> as the item to be equipped."

The shaped boots mod helped because Shoes and High/Low boots are both on the same Layer of clothing (over). Gloves, Mittens, and Gauntlets are are all on different layers (Under, Cover, and Armor respectively). If anything, High/Low boots should actually be moved to the Armor layer and that would fix things.

Gloves can always be worn under gauntlets as they are 'under' the Gauntlets, have a size of 10, and gauntlets have a permit of 15. Mittens are actually worn over gauntlets. However, you can't have mittens + gloves + gauntlets as mittens have a permit of 20, and gauntlets + gloves combined size is 30.

Thanks for this. I was using the shaped boots mod and then my newest fort had a civ that wore mittens AND gloves, which meant that I traded one problem for another (my dwarves now weren't putting on their gauntlets properly). Really wish that military dwarves prioritized their military gear before their civilian options.

@SilverBullet - it's a lot more complex than that. For example, the wiki has an example for torso gear that has 3 mail shirts, 1 breastplate, 6 cloaks, and 16 capes as a legal/permitted set of torso gear that can be worn at the same time.

It uses a complex/weird system of size + permitted additional size that is defined for every item. On some body parts it limits them to 1-3 items. On others, it can be many more.

@The Eurbian Warlord - my understanding is that if you can't use gauntlets yet, having 2 pairs of leather gloves can give better armor protection than only one pair. Once you do have gauntlets, that's less of an issue because gauntlets give increased protection themselves.

@dimm_ddr - The only way I could see gloves + gauntlets being worn together is if them being on different layers somehow negates the permit size from the gloves, permitting the permit to expand to 15 from the gauntlets and thus allowing the gloves. Which if so would make this mod pointless - despite several requests from people because they were finding that dwarves were not equipping gauntlets properly.

@dimm_ddr - I've been going on the information from the wiki, and the game data files.

* Gloves have a size of 10, and a permit of 10 units of bulk.
* Gauntlets have a size of 20, and a permit of 15 units of bulk.
* Mittens have a size of 15, and a permit of 20 units of bulk.

So my understanding of the rules (based on the wiki) is:
* Dwarf puts on one pair of gloves. They have permitted another 10 units of bulk (not including cover items).
* Gauntlets are size 20. They're too big to fit into the 10 units that wearing the gloves left available.
* Gloves themselves are size 10. They'd normally be capable of putting one additional pair of gloves.
* Mittens are the covering layer. They increase the total permitted bulk to 20 for items up to the covering layer. 20 units of bulk can be either 2x10 for gloves, or 1x15 for the gauntlets.

Can't wear more than three in the same body part?

what is the benefit of your dwarves wearing two pairs of gloves?

Are you sure about not being able to wear both gloves and gauntlets? Because my dwarves are able to do that just fine: https://imgur.com/a/KdZ02Cs and I don't think I have any mods that changed any of those two equipment pieces. And checking the process of wearing on the wiki: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Armor#Process_for_equipping_a_new_piece_of_clothing I can only see the issue when a dwarf will try to wear gloves when they already have gauntlets equipped. If dwarf does not have anything equipped to the hands or only gloves - it should be possible to wear gloves with gauntlets without issue.

Nice, thank you. Tired of these little shits losing valuable digits.