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Subject: 
Re: Instead of ~Moved to
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad
Date: 
Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:20:53 GMT
Viewed: 
14376 times
  
In lugnet.cad, Tore Eriksson wrote:
In lugnet.cad, Steve Bliss wrote:
Tore,


<SNIP>

My parts directory has 456 "moved to" files, but there's not really any way
around having those -- they serve two purposes:

a) provide backwards compatibility for existing model files

The problem is that it doesn't. As I pointed out in my latest post,
http://news.lugnet.com/cad/?n=16880 , almost every single existing LDraw model
file ever made needs to be updated with every parts update realeasd. That has
absolutely nothing to do with true backwards compability. Be it that this is
fully automatically made in many different LCad appclications. But nevertheless,
an LDraw model can never ever be considered as finished. And that is IMHO
opinion very unsatisfactory and needs to be addressed.

b) because ldraw.org's distribution method can only add & update files,
providing stub files seems to be the best way to overwrite obsolete files.

That is true - today. But I hope and believe that we can come up with some even
better solution.

/Tore

I was going to start my response with "I don't understand", but Orion beat me to
it.

It is absolutely not necessary to update existing models with the replacement
file referred to by the "~Moved to" file, but maybe I am missing something about
how you are rendering your models.

Yes, some LDraw applications will _warn_ you about "~Moved to" files or
references to "~Moved to" files, but these are warnings, not advice to apply the
substitution. At least since the header standardisation at 2008-01, there are no
longer any "0 WRITE Part xxx moved to yyyy" statements in the "~Moved to" files,
as once was the convention.

In managing the growth and additional complexity of the parts library, the
"~Moved to" concept has been used to good purpose, allowing us to add support
for variants of the same part, to align the library with official part numbers,
and in some cases to adjust origins/orientations - all without breaking existing
models. These may not all be features of the library that everyone values, but
LDraw has a diverse user base with differing needs.

I can understand that the warning generated by commonly used con* primitives
that reference ring3 (which has been ~Moved to 4-4ring3) might be frustrating,
but this in hand with revised versions of those primitives already certified on
the Parts Tracker, thanks to quick reviews by "Philo" and "arezey".

It would be good to be able to remove the litter of unused files, such as
orphaned subfiles, where a dithered colour has been inlined in the course of
other changes, and this would be possible with a proper installer that could
delete files during the installation. However when a Windows installer download
was introduced with 2008-01 in repsonse to requests from novice users, I
received negative feedback from users who still wanted the familiar lack of
sophistication of a zip archive. These orphans cannot even be replaced with
zero-length files, because BrickSmith chokes on these.

Until such time as the prevalent LDraw applications can reference a metadata
file that contains the "~Moved to" information, I'm afraid we are stuck with
what we have. Is the cost of a few hundred files really more than that of adding
such funtionality to the toolset?

Chris Dee (LDraw Parts Library Admin)



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Instead of ~Moved to
 
In lugnet.cad, Chris Dee wrote: snip (...) The zip archive's chief virtue is not its familiarity, but its cross-platform portability. It's very important to maintain that. (...) I fixed that Bricksmith bug about a year and a half ago, so you don't (...) (14 years ago, 22-Jan-10, to lugnet.cad, FTX)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Instead of ~Moved to
 
(...) <SNIP> (...) The problem is that it doesn't. As I pointed out in my latest post, (URL) , almost every single existing LDraw model file ever made needs to be updated with every parts update realeasd. That has absolutely nothing to do with true (...) (14 years ago, 20-Jan-10, to lugnet.cad)

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