Hi all,
disclaimer: I am a total novice to digital lego modelling, so please don't be too harsh if the following does not make sense/is obvious etc.
Could you clarify a couple of things?
1) Which LDCAD meta commands are you talking about exactly? Is it all PATH_* and SNAP_* commands? Also SPRING_*? Anything else?
2) What exactly does "making them official mean"? I suppose they will still be meta commands, won't they? Will they still start with !LDCAD or what will the syntax be?
More importantly, what does "making them official" mean for other editors/viewers? Does it mean for example that an editor that decides to implement snapping should do it this way instead of inventing its own meta commands? For that maybe an "official recommendation" would be sufficient instead of making it part of the standard. Or does it mean that every standard-compliant editor has to support these commands?
It is clear that Roland has put _a lot_ of work into these features. Requiring the authors of every other software who want to be compliant with the standard to do the same would be a substantial obstacle. I think it is a great advantage of the ldraw file format that it is so simple to implement and most advanced features are realized via optional meta commands. These issues could be mitigated if the official standard would come with an official reference implementation, i.e. an open source and platform-independent library for PATH_* and SNAP_* commands. Only Roland can tell how much work it would be to extract this functionality into such a library and whether he would be willing to do so.
Another question would be what this change means for parts authors. Will they be required to provide snapping information? My knowledge of parts definition and snapping information is so limited that I have no idea what that would entail.
These are my (somewhat spontaneous) thoughts on the subject. I hope you don't consider this as trespassing into an area which a ldraw novice should stay clear of.
Best wishes,
Lutz
disclaimer: I am a total novice to digital lego modelling, so please don't be too harsh if the following does not make sense/is obvious etc.
Could you clarify a couple of things?
1) Which LDCAD meta commands are you talking about exactly? Is it all PATH_* and SNAP_* commands? Also SPRING_*? Anything else?
2) What exactly does "making them official mean"? I suppose they will still be meta commands, won't they? Will they still start with !LDCAD or what will the syntax be?
More importantly, what does "making them official" mean for other editors/viewers? Does it mean for example that an editor that decides to implement snapping should do it this way instead of inventing its own meta commands? For that maybe an "official recommendation" would be sufficient instead of making it part of the standard. Or does it mean that every standard-compliant editor has to support these commands?
It is clear that Roland has put _a lot_ of work into these features. Requiring the authors of every other software who want to be compliant with the standard to do the same would be a substantial obstacle. I think it is a great advantage of the ldraw file format that it is so simple to implement and most advanced features are realized via optional meta commands. These issues could be mitigated if the official standard would come with an official reference implementation, i.e. an open source and platform-independent library for PATH_* and SNAP_* commands. Only Roland can tell how much work it would be to extract this functionality into such a library and whether he would be willing to do so.
Another question would be what this change means for parts authors. Will they be required to provide snapping information? My knowledge of parts definition and snapping information is so limited that I have no idea what that would entail.
These are my (somewhat spontaneous) thoughts on the subject. I hope you don't consider this as trespassing into an area which a ldraw novice should stay clear of.
Best wishes,
Lutz