I kind of like the idea. It permits to depart from the ldraw format without breaking compatibility. You could put all needed info inside (normals, edges, condlines, etc) and the developers could take full advantage of everything.
Were you thinking about "flattening" che hierarchy, or keeping it? maybe it's better if a single .prt file contains all the data for a part without dependency (ie, all subparts are "inlined"), to mantain the concept of "one file, one part".
The only problem i see is that ldr and mpd file are themselves in the ldraw format. So opening and ldr file would mean parse both the "old" (current) and new format, also, nothing stops an ldr/mpd file from having tri/quads/lines directly inside, which would be a problem. Designing a new format for "models" too would mean that programs based on the new library will be unable to open old files out in the wild (effectively creating some kind of fork). Indeed one of the characteristic of the current format is that there's no precise boundaries between model, submodel, part, subpart and primitive.
Also i get the feeling that this would be some kind of "side project" that will fail to bring any real innovation on the ldraw world. But maybe not, maybe some developer will start using the new library and we can make a smooth transition without breaking anything..
Were you thinking about "flattening" che hierarchy, or keeping it? maybe it's better if a single .prt file contains all the data for a part without dependency (ie, all subparts are "inlined"), to mantain the concept of "one file, one part".
The only problem i see is that ldr and mpd file are themselves in the ldraw format. So opening and ldr file would mean parse both the "old" (current) and new format, also, nothing stops an ldr/mpd file from having tri/quads/lines directly inside, which would be a problem. Designing a new format for "models" too would mean that programs based on the new library will be unable to open old files out in the wild (effectively creating some kind of fork). Indeed one of the characteristic of the current format is that there's no precise boundaries between model, submodel, part, subpart and primitive.
Also i get the feeling that this would be some kind of "side project" that will fail to bring any real innovation on the ldraw world. But maybe not, maybe some developer will start using the new library and we can make a smooth transition without breaking anything..