Official Library File Format Restictions

[Chris Dee]

As part of our meeting last year in Billund, we expressed a desired to make the learning curve for authoring parts a little less steep. As part of that, I'm working on clarifying the rules for the Official Library. Recently we've had a discussion about complete assemblies and disallowing sticker shortcuts for stickers applied to single, flat parts. As a result of those discussion, I made a draft revision to the File Format Restrictions for the Official Library. Proposed changes in red:
https://www.ldraw.org/hidden-content/dra...brary.html

I also posted about my concerns about documentation fragmentation. I personally feel that the File Format Restrictions for the Official Library document should one single source for all the rules for parts in the official library. With that reasoning in mind, I think "Official Library Policy On Embedding POV-Ray Code" should be cancelled since those METAs are already disallowed. Also, the "Parts numbering scheme for parts with unknown numbers" and "Official Library Specification for Sticker Parts" should be folded into the main document. There are also some pages on the PT that can be added as well.

Basically, I'm opening the entire "File Format Restrictions for the Official Library" document up for revision. How should this document be laid out? What else should be included? I have the ability to separate sections in to tabs and other formatting tricks. I also think a downloadable PDF for quick, offline reference might be a good idea. Maybe even a Quick Reference One Sheet for commonly used info.

I'd like to have a full and frank discussion about this. Remember, if you have a problem, propose a solution. Also, we're not going to break backwards compatibility. Aside from those 2 rules almost anything goes.

I would prefer to separate the rules about the content of the files from those about naming the files.