New header METAs proposal

[Orion Pobursky]

Starting this as a separate thread since I think Peter had some good suggestions:

Getting back to the original topic; I wanted to discover some way of annotating official parts with a tag that states what would need to be fixed if a part for some other reason is being edited. IMHO, the "needs work" sounds appropriate although it is not currently used or even intended for such use.

Maybe !NEEDSWORK could be added as a meta instead of being appended to the description and/or comments/!HELP.

Why not create a !BRICKLINK meta specifically for taking care of the mapping? Or a !LINK meta with two arguments - one for the authority (e.g. BrickLink), and the other for the ID?

[Orion Pobursky]

I like !LINK a lot. I think I'd rather use !EXTERNAL

I'm medium on !NEEDSWORK. I don't think there's enough parts in this category to warrant Yet Another META ™

I have one more suggestion:
Subcategories.

[Peter Blomberg]

Since !NEEDSWORK is mostly invisible to the user, could it be a flag on the PT? That would make it possible to add needswork flags to official parts whenever the needs are discovered.

[Orion Pobursky]

Since !NEEDSWORK is mostly invisible to the user, could it be a flag on the PT? That would make it possible to add needswork flags to official parts whenever the needs are discovered.

While that certainly is a possibility, a PT flag doesn't follow the part into distribution which I think "needs work" should. I'm pretty convinced that the current rule is the best solution.

[Roland Melkert]

I like !LINK a lot. I think I'd rather use !EXTERNAL

I too would rather see something like !EXTERNAL. eg:

Code:

0 !EXTERNAL "bricklink" "blabla"

But I'm wondering if this should be in the part files them selves. It might be easier to maintain in a LDConfig.ldr like additional file.

I'm medium on !NEEDSWORK. I don't think there's enough parts in this category to warrant Yet Another META

Isn't this kind of tag more at its place in the !LDRAW_ORG meta, maybe a new qualifier?

[Orion Pobursky]

But I'm wondering if this should be in the part files them selves. It might be easier to maintain in a LDConfig.ldr like additional file.

In Part file
Pro: The external number is searchable.
Con: The part file itself is edited if there are changes.

Separate file:
Pro: Significantly easier to maintain.
Con: Searching is more complicated.

[N. W. Perry]

But I'm wondering if this should be in the part files them selves. It might be easier to maintain in a LDConfig.ldr like additional file.

Makes sense, this is how Studio does it, FWIW.