Instruction making rant

[Daniel R]

Same example using my envisioned syntax:

Code:

0 !FLOAT [id=x] [color] [matrix] [file reference]
1 [file reference line-part or submodel]
…
0 !FLOAT [x] [new color] [new matrix] [new file reference]
…
0 !FLOAT [x] [new color] [new matrix] [new file reference]
…
0 !UNFLOAT [x]

Now I like this, with explicit UNFLOAT marker in the target step instead of step counting With support for both parts and groups this is reasonably succinct and powerful.

Moreover, if I understand correctly that the first (and only) type 1 is describing the part in its final position, while all the FLOAT lines describe intermediate positions, this syntax solves the problem of compatibility with other editors which do not support this meta (that is a problem for BUFEXCHG, REMOVE GROUP and two other suggestions in this thread). I didn't think about it before, this is cool.

And the parameters could be mutually optional, so you provide only what's changed (position, or color, or file reference) instead of the whole line.

I support making them optional. Also it would be a good thing to discourage users from actually changing reference and color. By the way, I can't find any reasonable use for change of color. Is there one? I am not saying it should not be supported.

After some thought I understood that it sometimes necessary to replace the reference: this is needed for flexible parts. Because moving path points by some FLOAT/MOVEGROUP would work only in simple cases, in more complex cases you would need different number of path points, therefore, new submodel. It is still not clear how the fallback code should be handled in case we allow to FLOAT individual path points.