Clarify Name line

[Travis Cobbs]

The following thread says that the current documentation for the 0 Name: line in the LDraw spec is incorrect:

http://forums.ldraw.org/showthread.php?t...56#pid7256

While I personally feel that the current documentation is more ambiguous than outright wrong (there's some ambiguity in the term "filename"), I agree that it would be better for the spec to be clear and unambiguous.

[Allen Smith]

Since 0 Name: doesn't actually do anything, the most valuable thing the spec could say is that the line is for decorative purposes only and has no real meaning. Beyond that, I don't think it's all that important to specify the exact form of decorative comments.

Allen

[Travis Cobbs]

Apparently it is used for a specific purpose in the parts library, and even verified algorithmically as part of the release process. Given that, I think that the official library header specification document should be updated to change the following text:

Filename is the file name

to instead be:

Filename is the relative path to the file, relative to the P or PARTS directory.

[Roland Melkert]

I think that would fix most confusion if not all.

[Roland Melkert]

Since 0 Name: doesn't actually do anything, the most valuable thing the spec could say is that the line is for decorative purposes only and has no real meaning. Beyond that, I don't think it's all that important to specify the exact form of decorative comments.

The name tag seems 'useless' but it might come in handy when the filename of the dat file has been changed somehow. The (unofficial) part might be added to an mpd for example. In such a case software could unpack/restore it to it's correct name using the name tag. It could also be usefull for copy paste actions, where software could for example suggest a file name when you want to save the pasted file.

In short I do think we should ether force a consistent syntax (like now) instead of saying it's there but we don't care. In the later case I would even prefer removing it from the mandatory header lines.

[Allen Smith]

The MPD example wouldn't be a good idea. The correct name is the 0 FILE name; anything else is, well, just a potentially-unreliable decorative comment. Don't get me wrong, I love decorative headers. If you ever look at my source code, you'll see it's absolutely drenched with them. But that doesn't change the fact that they have no syntactic meaning.

This is all pedantry, by the way. The header specification may call for whatever it wishes. Just don't write software which assumes the name of the file is anything other than what the filesystem (or 0 FILE) says it is.

Allen