Nicola Wrote:About input problems, i think a program should be robust enought not to crash and report any error, but should never try to "autofix" things. HTML parsers of the previous decade showed this very clearly: the first browsers tried to autocorrect erratic html, and what they caused was more erratic html being createdI fully agree with you in this aspect. Programs need to be robust against rubbish, but should ignore it.
Otherwise people create more and more rubbish and are not aware of it. HTML is the exact example how things went mad.
Thanks a lot for pointing this out.
Regarding the LDRAW file format simplicity, I would like to answer, YES, I still regard LDRAW file format "simple":
It exactly IS what you claimed, i.e, just 3D vertices and color. It just has added tiny, tiny additions to it:
(a) BFC
(b) conditional lines
© inclusion of other files
Later,
(d) textures
were added. But (a)+© are trivial. (b) is a bit tricky and un-conventional but can programmatically done.
However, yes, I agree that some things like normals, connectivity info etc. is missing, but I would
still name the current format "simple". I would prefer to extend it to support normals and connectivity.
Not to replace it. It should be simple and easy to add those 2 syntax elements downwards-compatibly.