Ben Supnik Wrote:I think that if the -only- thing on the table here is JSON vs. .dat/.ldr syntax, then it's sort of "who-cares"...I can write a program to convert from one to the other and then back losslessly - it is a re-encoding of the same information.
The real question of a second library is whether it is -semantically- different...for example, a "second" library could be:
- Flattened - every triangle in a part is in the part file and not in primitives.
- Have no conditional lines.
- Have quads reduced to pairs of triangles.
- Have the shared vertices pre-indexed.
- Have normals pre-computed for apparently-smooth surfaces.
- Have UV coordinates pre-computed for textured parts (from the spec'd projection).
These are changes such that conversions between the two formats would be "lossy". If a second library isn't semantically different, it doesn't provide substantial benefits to apps.
Agreed! The shape of the format is irrelevant, the content is. The concept of a compiled library clearly show what we need.