RE: Ldraw linux packages
2016-04-02, 15:31 (This post was last modified: 2016-04-02, 15:39 by Don Heyse. Edit Reason: Testing editing on a typo. )
2016-04-02, 15:31 (This post was last modified: 2016-04-02, 15:39 by Don Heyse. Edit Reason: Testing editing on a typo. )
Hi Milan,
The forum software switchover is giving me trouble, so this is a bit late and may be somewhat garbled. Sorry.
Anyhow, I'm not sure how the LDraw Linux project could possibly be older than the idea of ldraw.ini. That file was already in use -- at least on Windows -- at the tail end of last century, initially by the LDRAW Add On program and then ldglite. It actually feels more like a *millennium* ago to me. At that time the only shared information in the ini file was the LDRAWDIR location. The idea of configurable subdirectory search paths in the ldraw.ini file and in some related environment variables came later. Something like 12 years ago. This resulted in the ldrawini sourceforge project to make the same configuration settings available on Windows, OSX, and linux. L3p and LDView both use the ldrawini code, and now LPub3D and ldglite do as well. All but LPub3D are currently available on linux. LPub4 makes use of it indirectly, through the image rendering programs.
Actually, I have to say ldglite almost supports ldrawini. I remembered this morning that my netbook has a mixed filesystem. The HOME directory is on a case sensitive partition, but I'd managed to install the ldraw directory onto the insensitive FAT partition, so my linux testing was flawed and incomplete. I retested it and pushed the fixes to my ldglite github fork, but there's probably some more bugs to shake out before I declare it a real release.
Meanwhile, I don't think it's necessary to do anything in your project to support ldraw.ini since the LDRAWDIR environment variable covers the essentials, and reasonable defaults are created for the rest. However, it might be helpful to create an ldraw.ini file with the default settings in it. Something like this example ldraw.ini file, but without the lsynth line. I don't think it'd cause any harm if it only contained the defaults. The contents of the ldraw.ini file and how to use it are described on the l3p site, about halfway down the page.
Don
The forum software switchover is giving me trouble, so this is a bit late and may be somewhat garbled. Sorry.
Anyhow, I'm not sure how the LDraw Linux project could possibly be older than the idea of ldraw.ini. That file was already in use -- at least on Windows -- at the tail end of last century, initially by the LDRAW Add On program and then ldglite. It actually feels more like a *millennium* ago to me. At that time the only shared information in the ini file was the LDRAWDIR location. The idea of configurable subdirectory search paths in the ldraw.ini file and in some related environment variables came later. Something like 12 years ago. This resulted in the ldrawini sourceforge project to make the same configuration settings available on Windows, OSX, and linux. L3p and LDView both use the ldrawini code, and now LPub3D and ldglite do as well. All but LPub3D are currently available on linux. LPub4 makes use of it indirectly, through the image rendering programs.
Actually, I have to say ldglite almost supports ldrawini. I remembered this morning that my netbook has a mixed filesystem. The HOME directory is on a case sensitive partition, but I'd managed to install the ldraw directory onto the insensitive FAT partition, so my linux testing was flawed and incomplete. I retested it and pushed the fixes to my ldglite github fork, but there's probably some more bugs to shake out before I declare it a real release.
Meanwhile, I don't think it's necessary to do anything in your project to support ldraw.ini since the LDRAWDIR environment variable covers the essentials, and reasonable defaults are created for the rest. However, it might be helpful to create an ldraw.ini file with the default settings in it. Something like this example ldraw.ini file, but without the lsynth line. I don't think it'd cause any harm if it only contained the defaults. The contents of the ldraw.ini file and how to use it are described on the l3p site, about halfway down the page.
Don