Subject:
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Re: Announcing LEGO Digital Designer 1.0
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad, lugnet.lego.direct
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Date:
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Wed, 30 Apr 2003 06:55:22 GMT
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Viewed:
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2443 times
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In lugnet.cad, Jake McKee writes:
> More on this post tomorrow, but a couple of quick answers. By compete, I
> just meant that our DD software isn't meant to compete with, say MLCad. It
> is designed for use by kids around the age of 7 or 8. MLCad, I would assume,
> doesn't really become easily usable until the age of 12 or so, right?
I don't know if anyone's done an age study, but that sounds about right.
> [...]
> More info on this tomorrow when I can get feedback from better informed
> colleagues. But hey, in (almost) 3 years working with the community, have I
> ever presented something that doesn't turn out good for the community in the
> end?
Which end? ;-)
> [...]
> Now, that being said, take the NDA discussion out of your statement above
> and you have your answer as to why the community would support LXF... we can
> all share in the work, and if LEGO comes up with "some totally ingenious
> method for encoding part connections", it's not just ours. It's your too.
Is it mine in the sense that I can legally implement the same method in
another file format?
> > I'd love to be wrong, though. But part of my job is to be skeptical. :-)
> It is? Sounds like an interesting job!
Naturally, part of my job at LUGNET is to try to look out for the best
interests of LUGNET and its users. From a technical standpoint, I'm kind of
automatically skeptical of: (a) any binary file format, (b) any proprietary
file format, and (c) any file format with which patents are associated.
> Do you get dental with that? :)
Ya, helps with the knuckle sandwiches. :)
> > > As they learn, they would hopefully graduate to more complex powerful LEGO
> > > building tools.
> > This sounds encouraging! :-) Do you mean that Digital Designer 1.0 is but
> > the first in a sequence of ever-more-powerful and exciting software coming
> > down the pike from LEGO? Do you think LEGO ever might release something as
> > powerful as MLCAD?
> I meant that they would graduate to the community developed tools.
Then I imagine LEGO is planning to provide links to these tools from the
lego.com website, so that these kids could find them as they learn and
graduate to more complex demands. This in itself may be the incentive for
tool authors to support the LXF format.
I expect we'll see a press release this summer touting the fact that AFOLs
have embraced the LXF format?
> Don't quote me quite yet on this one, but from what I understand, the
> documentation will be available to all, and yes, you will be able to extend
> the format.
A question for your colleagues: Is it a tagged file format then? (Like
TIFF images, TrueType font files, and ESRI map files -- these are examples
of tagged file formats.)
Will the LXF file format be binary or text-based?
Will the documentation be complete enough that I can write, say, a C program
that converts LDraw parts into LXF parts? Or if I want to convert LDraw to
LXF, am I going to *have to* use the SDK? I guess what I'm asking is, will
the documentation be complete enough that no one will bother reverse
engineering the file format? I'd love this answer to be "yes," because it
means that someone is likely to write open-source command-line-based
conversion utilities in C or Python or Perl, which would be my preferred
method of use on a server.
> This is where I hope that the LDraw community comes together to
> formalize. This will help make it much easier to extend, help to ensure
> quality of the extension. We will need to be involved in this process at
> first though. (The Adobe PostScript example was a good one from another post
> in this thread).
I'm looking forward to following these discussions.
I believe one of the main reasons that the Ogg Vorbis file format was
created is because the MP3 file format is mired by patents. Similarly, one
of the (many) reasons the PNG file format was created is because the GIF
file format is (or was) mired by patents.
I don't know if the patent referred to here:
http://news.lugnet.com/cad/?n=8622
covers or restricts use of the LXF format or not... but if it does, then one
thing worth being aware of is that, historically, the geek community tends
to go around roadblocks like these by inventing altogether better and more
open file formats from scratch. MP3 and GIF had a huge advantage over Ogg
and PNG because they were there first and had time to become well
entrenched. LXF, on the other hand, is the newcomer, where LDraw -- the
open file format -- is well entrenched.
--Todd
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Announcing LEGO Digital Designer 1.0
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| (...) More on this post tomorrow, but a couple of quick answers. By compete, I just meant that our DD software isn't meant to compete with, say MLCad. It is designed for use by kids around the age of 7 or 8. MLCad, I would assume, doesn't really (...) (21 years ago, 30-Apr-03, to lugnet.cad, lugnet.lego.direct)
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