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[Crossposted to lugnet.cad & lugnet.admin.general, with followups set to
lugnet.admin.general.]
In a message posted to the L-CAD mailing list, Tim Courtney raised the
question of whether there should be a lugnet.cad.ldraw-parts group. The
following is the body of my reply to Tim on the L-CAD mailing list. It
wasn't possible to send the message both to the L-CAD list and to the ng's
here in a single message without Tim's permission to quote him directly here
(since the L-CAD mailing list is currently external to the lugnet.com
newsserver).
--Todd
> [...Tim's question about lugnet.cad.ldraw-parts...]
Like for discussing part numberings and/or codification of official TLG
elements? I wonder: If a group like that would indeed be useful, might
it make more sense as a part of or as a subgroup of the .dev/.development
subgroup of lugnet.cad? The 'ldraw' designation may also be a bit overly-
specific if the realm of .DAT files spans beyond purely LDraw. (LeoCAD
can import and export .DAT files, right?)
One thing we could do with the lugnet.cad.dat group, BTW, is to use it as
a linkable storage well for various types of .DAT files. (It almost is
already -- in a small way -- but allow me to elaborate...)
Let's say that I modeled the LL918 ship in LDraw and posted its .DAT file
to lugnet.cad.dat. Now I could set up a link to it from anywhere on the
net. (I don't actually have an LL918 ship to point to, so here's something
Terry posted...)
http://www.lugnet.com/news/ldraw.cgi?lugnet.cad.dat:28
Now just by clicking on that link, wherever it is, the model contained in
that .DAT file would magically appear on a user's screen if they have
LDLITE and the relevant LDraw parts installed. Alternatively, a user can
choose to save that .DAT content to a file on their local hard drive or
view the original news post in its entirety by looking at:
http://www.lugnet.com/news/display.cgi?lugnet.cad.dat:28
If I later discovered a mistake in my .DAT file, I could repost a new
version of the file as a follow-up to the original article, and then update
my link to point to the new version. Not only would the new version then
be immediately available, but previous versions (as well as prior and
follow-up discussions) would all be available as related articles in the
thread tree.
For an interesting example of the .DAT/discussion phenomenon, see:
http://www.lugnet.com/news/display.cgi?lugnet.cad.dat:49
> From the thread tree at the bottom of the page, you can see that the
content Jeremy posted was a follow-up to a discussion started over in
lugnet.build. There were also two thumbs-up commentary articles posted
as follow-ups to Jeremy's posting.
Here's another example:
http://www.lugnet.com/news/display.cgi?lugnet.cad.dat:47
Anyway...I wouldn't go so far to suggest that individual parts files for
all LDraw parts be posted to lugnet.cad.dat as a development archive, but
the .dat newsgroup could certainly be used that way if a parts developer
found it useful, in part or in whole. (NPI :-)
On a related note, over the coming weeks the newsgroup system on lugnet.com
will be seeing increasing integration with other portions of the system,
including the Lugnet/Pause database of sets and a refocusing of the
newsgroups as discussion areas for various LEGO-fan sub-communities.
That is, it makes sense at this point to leverage the existing ng framework
in a way which permits people to more easily make comments about sets,
themes, product lines, etc. right from the DB web-pages. This ties in
closely with the realization of the "User Groups" discussed in the middle
of the page at:
http://www.lugnet.com/plan/plan-4.html
The concepts outlined on that page are sorta happening in a backwards order;
we've got the "Message Boards" now (I.e., the newsgroups), but we don't yet
have official memberships and coherent "User Groups" to mirror the message
boards. One hot item that needs attention in particular is increasing the
visibility of the loc.* groups, since many of these are currently
underutilized and it's kinda hard to casually "surf on in" to them at the
moment.
Basically, every lugnet newsgroup will be given a more meaningful URL on
the website, and [almost] every meaningful URL on the website will have an
associated newsgroup-based discussion area.
--Todd
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