(2022-03-30, 14:29)N. W. Perry Wrote: For the tiles this makes sense, as the groove-less tiles are so old that most uses will require the grooved ones. It would be similar to the old Mursten-era bricks with slots, beams without posts, or plates with waffle bottoms.
It might be necessary at some point to find a cut-off, though. For example, would this also to apply to the ubiquitous jumper plate? This had no groove until much more recently, so while the grooved version is the current standard, there are perhaps as many official sets that would use the groove-less version. Also for the jumper plate, as well as certain tiles, there are multiple bottom variations that exist concurrently, or nearly so. Would we want to extend a similar naming convention to those?
It's tempting (and perhaps ultimately best) to let this be decided case-by-case. Although that is probably what led to the current situation in the first place…suffice to say, if there is an obvious guiding principle that we can identify for all parts—e.g., newest/current mold variation gets the least verbose description—perhaps this is a good time to do so.
I see where you are headed with this and I think that a category called something like "Tile, Without Groove" fits in the current array of LDraw categories.
By extension you could do others like:
Plate, waffle bottom
Brick, no vertical tubes
Brick, with slots
For jumper plates there are 3 versions.
There are also the recent addition of 1x4 plate with 2 studs that has had an update in the last few years to have a groove.
There is also the new 2x2 tile with 2 studs that I am sure will get a groove in the next few years (this however would fit in the above category changes)
This is probably controversial but with some of these, are jumpers modified plates or modified tiles? They fit better in my mind as modified tiles because of the groove but I am sure changing that at this point in the game is gonna cause some frustrations.