Are standards for official parts too strict?

[Steffen]

I am fine with the current standards.

Allowing gaps etc. in parts is something I would not want to see happen.

The (Needs Work) suffix is a good compromise, which allows to let out parts which still need to be worked on.

I especially appreciate the introduction of the !LDRAW_ORG type header element.

I have 2 points where I would like to see a rules relaxation, both refer to the !HISTORY element:

(1)
I never understood the distinction between [...] and {...}. I can not imagine any kind of software which would
rely on that. Even if such software existed, and it would parse that stuff, it would need to connect to the ldraw.org site to make the strings it finds any useful. And as it anyway has to do that, it does not matter whether it found those strings between [...] or {...}. The mix of both to me makes the !HISTORY lines harder to read, and this way one of its major purposes is spoilt.
Suggestion: drop the requirement for using {...}. Just use [...] always.

(2)
Current rules try to force authors to NOT use a tabular !HISTORY like this:

Code:

0 !HISTORY 2011-10-01 [Steffen]                   did something
0 !HISTORY 2011-10-02 [xyz]                       did something else
0 !HISTORY 2012-01-01 [SomebodyWithALongUsername] did another thing

, they instead try to enforce

Code:

0 !HISTORY 2011-10-01 [Steffen] did something
0 !HISTORY 2011-10-02 [xyz] did something else
0 !HISTORY 2012-01-01 [SomebodyWithALongUsername] did another thing

This is a to me completely unnecessary complication in the specs,
as any piece of software could easily skip all whitespace after the ] to get to the start of the comment line.
To me, the !HISTORY lines are mostly intended for human-reading. I want to quickly see what happened
or who did it, and a tabular layout helps here. I want to be free to use or not use it at will.
Suggestion: allow any number of whitespaces after the ].