Roland Melkert Wrote:This looks nice, but I must admit I'm at a lost on how to proceed with the whole texture meta thing.
Travis removed three parts of the standard because they aren't implemented in code yet, and he felt that keeping things simpler would be less confusing.
However, the parts shown here need GLOSSMAP so the shiny paints will "look right", and CYLINDRICAL so that the Kimono Girl's head will properly wrap the texture that needs to be built for it. The Foundry author is looking into creating sample code for CYLINDRICAL (as he did for the original PLANAR support). We will need to add lightsources and multi-texturing with a shader to Foundry to provide sample code for GLOSSMAP (after CYLINDRICAL is implemented).
So I had an issue with cutting features out of the standard when they're really not optional, long term.
As should be obvious from the way the meta was so carefully built, it was designed to work in the LDRAW system, including backwards compatibility, and that was our goal when we started.
In the past two years since, several interested parties, including LDRAW committee members, advised me that the meta might "do better" if it remained external. Unfortunately, that change of plans was not communicated to Travis in the clearest manner, and he proceeded with his presentation of the specification -- also unfortunately not well communicated *back* to me a priori, so Travis and I could get on the same page.
I don't have an issue with ratification, despite the advice that ratification by the LSC has often killed innovation in the past, but rest assurred that we plan to continue our work and to expand the specification as necessary, whether it's fully "external" or not.
The best approach, in my humble opinion, would be to ratify the entire spec as it stands (if ratification happens), since we are planning to implement the "excised" portions in the coming weeks or months, and there would be a pretty quick follow-up vote otherwise.
-- joshua