Use of "LDraw" in the name of ldraw related programs.

[Jean-Philippe Ouellet]

SteerCo has since voted not to allow this. See this announcement.

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The day is slowly approaching when I will make my WebGL based LDraw software public.

Right now, I call it "WebGLDraw". I believe it is a clever name as it is almost a direct concatenation of the two technologies that compose it, however, I remember from reading Bricksmith years ago that internally, it calls itself MacLDraw. I believe (it's been a very long time) that I remember reading in some comment someplace in Bricksmith something about that it was going to be called MacLDraw but that the name was changed because the community had reservations about using the name LDraw... something about people possibly inferring that it was an official mac version of LDraw written by James or something... not sure. I tried to go back and find the explanation, but I was unable to, so I ask you here.

Is it ok for me to you the name WebGLDraw? Or should I name it something else? Do you have any suggestions for a name?



Also, as for Logos, is this acceptable?

(BTW, I wrote it as an SVG, I just can't attach them here)

It was designed to look like:


Which was in turn designed to look like:

[Willy Tschager]

Thx for asking. I'm gonna move this to the SteerCo and get back to you as soon as we have reached consensus.

w.

[Steffen]

Hello Jean-Philippe,
I'm looking forward to see your program appear,
however, I have some thoughts on the logo:

(a)
Currently, it only reads "LDraw", not "WebGLDraw", so I think it is a bit misleading.
It should be more easy for a viewer to recognize that this is not LDraw's logo, but instead WebGLDraw's one, IMHO.

(b)
However, using "WebGLDraw" might bring you into trouble with the WebGL folks,
because the two logos deal with the same technical subject and visually are very similar.

Thinking more of this, I would like to suggest you to pick some unique, own logo,
and not tie your tool's logo to the WebGL one.
WebGL is only a technology, so should you switch to some future one later,
you'll have to change your logo which is probably not what you want to do.

While I'm writing this, some more possible names for your tool come to my mind, I just drop them
here for inspiration

WebGL Viewer for LDraw
LDrawWebViewer
LDrawWebGLViewer
in similarity to LDView: WebGLView
or, simply because OpenGL, WebGL are just GL: GLView
LDraw WebViewer
LDraw WebView
LDrawWebViewer
LDrawWebView
LDrawWWW

[Steffen]

Suggestion: I would like to ask the three threads

http://forums.ldraw.org/showthread.php?tid=1167,1529
http://forums.ldraw.org/showthread.php?tid=1527,1527
http://forums.ldraw.org/showthread.php?tid=856,1022

merged into a single thread "LDraw App / LDraw Web Renderer"

[Allen Smith]

Jean-Philippe Ouellet Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> however, I remember from reading Bricksmith
> years ago that internally, it calls itself
> MacLDraw. [snip] I tried to go back and find
> the explanation, but I was unable to, so I ask you
> here.

The comment you are looking for is still floating around in Bricksmith/Source/Other/MacLDraw.h. I never knew I actually had an audience in all of these prosaic comments I leave myself in the code, but sometimes they make for fun reading.

I asked about the "Mac LDraw" title in 2005. Tim Courtney personally responded with reservations about using the LDraw name, but the Steering Committee didn't respond officially (unless I've forgotten a Lugnet post). However, I took Tim's reservations seriously and thought up a name I like much better. The name "Mac LDraw" was never publicly released; it lives on only in two header files I've been too lazy to rename.

Allen

[Jean-Philippe Ouellet]

Ah yes, I especially appreciated all the dealloc stuff.

"It's AppKit, in the Library, with the Lead Pipe!!!"

[Jean-Philippe Ouellet]

I suppose the logo does resemble its origins a bit too closely.

My idea was to breed the LDraw and WebGL logos to arrive at something that shouts "Look at me! I'm made of WebGL and LDraw!" but the obvious derivative-work of WebGL may land me in hot water if people start thinking that Khronos endorses me, or that I represent LDraw in any official capacity.

As for the name, I really like it, so I'll wait to hear the verdict from the SteerCo before I try to settle on an alternative, but thanks for your suggestions.

Edit: I was thinking some more about possible names if SteerCo doesn't approve, and I think I'll go with LDWeb, it's short, says what it needs to, and is easy to pronounce.

Edit 2: Fortunately when I made the logo, I made it as a hand-written SVG, so generating a new one was a piece of cake:

Not sure what I did last time to make the background transparent when I rasterized it, but oh well.