LDConfig.ldr location and search order.

[Roland Melkert]

Don Heyse and Steffen asked us to discuss the location of LDConfig.ldr, and add it to the standard(s) somewhere, see:

http://forums.ldraw.org/showthread.php?tid=272,272
and
http://forums.ldraw.org/showthread.php?t...349#pid349

Also it appears to me the general search order is documented poorly, or I'm I missing something?

All current standard docs are about file formats and such, we might need a separate one for the file/directory structures.

[Travis Cobbs]

My opinion is that we should formalize the location of ldconfig.ldr in the LDraw root directory, since that's where it is in the parts library packages.

As for "search order", are you talking about the general search order for ldraw files? If so, I agree that something should be standardized. The standard locations are listed in the LDraw file spec, but no mention is made about what order they should be searched in.

[Roland Melkert]

Yes I mean the "search for LDraw parts", it's only briefly mentioned in the main spec. I think it should have it own place together with the ldconfig.ldr location and such.

Maybe even add information about the release notes and other files inlcuded in the library for background/technical reasons.

Like someone mentioned elsewhere in the forums, the location of those release notes is weird (in the model folder), but it has become the defacto standard for software to look for it there (e.g. LDView's autoupdate)

In short we need a spec/document that describes the files in the library, how to use them (search order etc) and their purpose (version log etc).

[Travis Cobbs]

For what it's worth, LDView 4.1 stopped using the release notes for auto-update. It now scans all parts in the parts directory and decides on the latest installed update based on that. This takes quite a lot longer, but has the advantage of being reliable, which the release note scanning wasn't.