Wow, that looks like some harsh criticism. Am I reading it wrong?
Personally, I think the inflexible hard plastic chain bits should be official parts that someone with a great deal of time and patience could place by hand if they so desired. I'm ambivalent about the various rings and tubes used for the flexible parts. I don't think the lsynth part orientation matrix math is all that intuitive, so I'd like to be able to fix it someday without the worry of modifying a bunch of official parts. On the other hand, it is handy to use generic ring and tube subparts that are already installed and perhaps used in other part files.
I'm not sure how to create a flexible part solution that's not "ridiculous". Synthesized parts can create rather large files, so it's easier to distribute the pre-synthesized files. But nobody is forcing anyone to do that. Also, the synthesis code is available, fairly compact, and hasn't changed for 2 years. I could say it's ridiculous that LDView hasn't incorporated the code (or something similar) so users can look at the files without installing extra tools. But that'd be ridiculous...
Anyhow, are those bad memories old and hazy, or do you remember enough detail for a bug report? There's not much to the installer so I could probably do something to fix it. Or, maybe what you really want is a relaxing break from all that LDView programming. Perhaps you could take a turn updating a small abandonware project that hasn't been touched in 2 years or so?
Whatcha think?
Personally, I think the inflexible hard plastic chain bits should be official parts that someone with a great deal of time and patience could place by hand if they so desired. I'm ambivalent about the various rings and tubes used for the flexible parts. I don't think the lsynth part orientation matrix math is all that intuitive, so I'd like to be able to fix it someday without the worry of modifying a bunch of official parts. On the other hand, it is handy to use generic ring and tube subparts that are already installed and perhaps used in other part files.
I'm not sure how to create a flexible part solution that's not "ridiculous". Synthesized parts can create rather large files, so it's easier to distribute the pre-synthesized files. But nobody is forcing anyone to do that. Also, the synthesis code is available, fairly compact, and hasn't changed for 2 years. I could say it's ridiculous that LDView hasn't incorporated the code (or something similar) so users can look at the files without installing extra tools. But that'd be ridiculous...
Anyhow, are those bad memories old and hazy, or do you remember enough detail for a bug report? There's not much to the installer so I could probably do something to fix it. Or, maybe what you really want is a relaxing break from all that LDView programming. Perhaps you could take a turn updating a small abandonware project that hasn't been touched in 2 years or so?
Whatcha think?