[LDPE] 0.8.53 Beta Released (bugfixes / many code improvements)

[Nils Schmidt]

Hey,

this version uses a different configuration file.
Therefore, it will be necessary to reset all your custom LDPE settings.

What you can do as a workaround:

• run two LDPE instances in parallel (0.8.53 + 0.8.52) and open both option menus to sync the settings manually.
  
• take screenshots from your options menu entries in 0.8.52 before installing 0.8.53.
  

The release includes a critical undo/redo bug-fix and a lot of major/minor code improvements.
In total, today's release adresses about 100 different code issues.


As always, you can download LDPE from this page:
http://nilsschmidt1337.github.io/ldparteditor/

Changelog:
(3 new features and 6 bug fixes)

With this release you will be able to...

• ...benefit from about 100 different optimizations to LDPEs code base (I added 180000 lines and deleted 185000 lines of code since the last release).
  
• ...benefit from a new, more robust and secure method which loads and saves LDPEs configuration file.
  
• ...get improved hints and tips for the startup dialog (seen on first program start).
  

The following critical issues were fixed:

1. Undo / Redo broke the 3D model if the file ended with empty lines or contained duplicated empty line groups.
   
2. The calculated colour for transparent textures was too dark. (OpenGL 2.0)
   
3. On MacOS X it was not possible to reassign a shortkey, because the dialog window had not the required focus for detecting the keyboard input.
   
4. Avoided obvious divisions by zero on "zoom to fit" with empty models and by scaling a zero-height font with Txt2Dat.
   
5. The 3D editor freezed by an BFC INVERTNEXT without a following TYPE 1 reference line.
   
6. "Make subpart from 3D selection" duplicated "0 BFC INVERTNEXT" meta commands.
   

---

The program was tested intensively with "real world" files.
However, it is still a beta version and something can go wrong in about 140.000 lines of code.

Make sure that you choose the right architecture for your OS and Java Virtual Machine (JVM) (64bit or 32bit).
A short guide how to check if a 64bit JVM is installed on your system is located at the bottom of this message.

1. Download the zip-Archive
   
2. Extract the archive content to the location of your choice
   
3. On windows, double-click "run.bat" to start LDPE.
   
4. On linux/mac, you have to excecute the shell script "run.sh" to start LDPE.
   

Please note that this software is in the beta stage. Although, this version was tested, there are already known issues  for this release. There is a potential risk of data loss.

You can search for updates if you do the following steps:

1. On windows, double-click "update.bat" to search for updates.
   
2. On linux/mac, you have to excecute the shell script "update.sh".
   

I listen carefully to your requests and possible complaints. Please leave me a message, with your thoughts and wishes to further improve the software.

LDPE is a 3D CAD application: The overall system requirements are higher. While I recommend to use a powerful 64-bit multicore system, it could be possible, to run LDPE on older machines as well.

System Requirements:


Minimum System Requirements:

• 64-bit Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.8
  
• OpenGL 2.1 compatible Graphics Card
  
• Operating System (64-bit): Windows [7 or newer], Linux [e.g. Ubuntu Linux >=14.4], Mac OS X [>=10.6]
  
• CPU: Multicore-Processor e.g. Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon II (>2.0Ghz)
  
• RAM: 4GB
  
• Video-Memory: 1 GB
  
• Free Disk Space: 100 MB
  

Recommended Requirements:

• Operating System (64bit): Windows 7,8,10, Linux [e.g. Ubuntu Linux >=14.4], Mac OS X [>=10.6]
  
• OpenGL 3.3 compatible Graphics Card
  
• CPU: Multicore-Processor with 4 cores (or more)
  
• RAM: >4 GB
  
• Video-Memory: >1 GB
  
• Free Disk Space: 512 MB
  
• For a faster start, LDPartEditor and the LDraw™ library should be installed on an SSD.
  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How to check your JVM version (32- or 64-bit):
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can try on the command line:

Code:

java -d64 version

If it's not a 64-bit version, you'll get a message that looks like:
This Java instance does not support a 64-bit JVM. Please install the desired version.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Installed... works fine so far
...one little thing: the icon bars on the left of 3D screen had different positions. Can't find again how to move them?

[Nils Schmidt]

It is possible to re-arrange the icon bars with the help of a specialised configuration file.

Please let me know what should be moved.
I'll create the config file for you and paste the contents here (together with a short description on how it works).

[Philippe Hurbain]

It is possible to re-arrange the icon bars with the help of a specialised configuration file.

Please let me know what should be moved.
I'll create the config file for you and paste the contents here (together with a short description on how it works).

That's not a critical one, I can easily get used to the new layout... it's just that it changed between 0.8.50 and 0.8.53 (and seeing how it looks like I understand the new more compact layout!). Attached screenshots - still had 0.8.50 around...
Speaking of toolbars, there are many icons I don't use, either because I use other ways such as right click or keyboard shortcut (red highlight), don't understand what they really do (blue) or don't see the point (green), and I could get rid of them...

[Willy Tschager]

...benefit from about 100 different optimizations to LDPEs code base (I added 180000 lines and deleted 185000 lines of code since the last release).

Sounds like a lot of work - let me see if it was worth

w.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Sounds like a lot of work - let me see if it was worth

w.

Oh - I didn't pay attention to the figures - Wow!!!

[Nils Schmidt]

Sounds like a lot of work - let me see if it was worth

Oh - I didn't pay attention to the figures - Wow!!!

I did a lot of refactoring work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring
This is basically very hard to see from a user's perspective
I had to remove a huge amout of code smells. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_smell

Here are all the 97 tasks from the 0.8.53 milestone:
https://github.com/nilsschmidt1337/ldpar...2?closed=1

And here is the code difference between 0.8.53 and the previous version (1,970 changed files with 80,827 additions and 85,264 deletions, not including the lines from renamed files):
https://github.com/nilsschmidt1337/ldpar....8.53-beta

It was only possible with the help of static code checking tools (like SonarLint, SonarQube and "Unnecessary Code Detector").
And of course my IDEs of choice Eclipse and IntelliJ.

[Willy Tschager]

Sounds really techy. I'm already happy when that little LUA coding i do for the AIOI doesn't fall apart. I would newer refactoring anything - never change a working code

w.

[Vincent Messenet]

Thanks for your hard work on LDPE! I did the update from 0.8.52 to 0.8.53. It started correctly I was able to set the configuration file, then LDPE is launched but the window is small and each time I try to modify the size of the window LDPE is frozen and I can't do anything further. However, if I don't try to modify the size I can use it without any problem other than the window is so small I can't really work on a file.

I am on MacOS Catalina 10.15.7 and never had any issue with the 0.8.52 version.

EDIT: Actually I found a workaround. If I use the maximize button from MacOS it does not freeze and after clicking it again I can resize the window without any issue.

[Nils Schmidt]

Hi,

the next version of LDPartEditor 0.8.54 will not require a seperate Java installation anymore.
So its a mayor change again, but it will make the life easier for new users I already pushed some code changes to the Github Repo.

Cheers,
Nils

PS: Technically, it will include a small Java 17 VM which is created with the JLink tool inside of my GitHub Actions pipeline.
The installers are created with JPackage. I am sure everyone understands the meaning

[Philippe Hurbain]

I am sure everyone understands the meaning

Not fully sure, but looks interesting nonetheless