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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Tue, 29 Apr 2003 17:55:40 GMT
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Viewed:
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2633 times
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In lugnet.cad, Jake McKee writes:
> [...]
> - Will your new building applications open DAT/LDR/MPD files?
> Probably not, but we hope to provide some tools for translating DAT/LDR/MPD
> into LXF.
Perhaps Digital Designer could offer third-party "plug-in" capabilities
(import/export) for reading and writing LDraw files...similar to the way
Adobe Photoshop works. But having some command-line tools to do the
conversion would probably be more useful. BTW, please don't alienate the
Unix crowd by releasing these conversion utilities as GUI tools or tools
only available on Windows.
> [...] We
> would definitely like to see the tools necessary to go back and forth
> between the two formats, because there is a lot of great stuff out there in
> the LDraw file format.
I think this is really encouraging. It bears repeating that it would be
really cool if DD could be invoked from the command line just like LDLite,
whereby a server sending a MIME type of X-Application-LXF (or whatever you
define as the MIME type) can tell the browser to launch the appropriate
viewer. It would also make it a lot easier here on LUGNET if we had a Unix
version of your LDR->LXF converter available, so that we can serve LXF files
directly from original LDR content without having to batch-convert the files
off-line on some Windows box.
> - Are you going to release a parts library?
> It makes a lot of sense for us to release parts, as LEGO is the source of
> all official parts anyway. However, we do not yet have a complete plan for
> how or if we can do this, and it's highly unlikely that we'd be able to
> release every part all at once. Your input on this issue is more than
> welcome; please tell us what would be useful for you.
I mentioned this to Brad etc. a few years ago but it bears repeating... If
you don't release a full collection of parts, what will inevitably happen is
that people will create their own parts in LXF format, either by converting
from LDraw or creating them from scratch. If DD doesn't totally blow (like
LEGOCAD did), then you can be sure that the LXF format will be reverse
engineered by someone.
Consequently, I would _highly_ recommend including an "is official" bit in
the LXF header block. If TLC releases its parts with this bit set to 1, and
documents the offset in the file, then I'm sure people creating their own
parts in LXF format will be respectful enough to set this bit to 0
voluntarily when they release their own parts for others to use.
> - Is the LXF format going to be open, will you publish it and will we be
> able to extend it?
> We will provide all of the necessary information in the SDK so that
> independent developers can make their own tools that use LXF.
Ok, this bears repeating too: Please please please release the SDK for Mac
OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD and not just for Microsoft Windows. This will
greatly decrease the probability that someone will need to reverse engineer
your format and write their own converter, FWIW.
> However, as
> many developers will tell you, it's good to try and manage the growth of a
> format to some extent, so we would like to maintain the official list of
> what the format includes.
So -- no, it won't be an open format? It'll be a closed, proprietary,
undocumented format?
> [...] open a dialog with the
> LDraw software developers under Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA). This will
> allow us to get their feedback on the SDK development, implementation
> concepts, and future developments.
(A quick aside to LCAD developers: IANAL, but if you think you might
potentially someday be interested in reverse engineering the LXF format for
fun or profit, or creating your own LXF parts, you might want to read the
NDA closely and make sure that you don't inadvertently agree to something
that you might regret later. Just a thought.)
--Todd
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Announcing LEGO Digital Designer 1.0
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| (...) I don't think LXF is going to be a parts format, it sounds like it's a way to exchange models only (think of it as LDraw with only type 1 lines). Out of curiosity, how do you plan to solve the problem of different parts library having parts (...) (22 years ago, 29-Apr-03, to lugnet.cad, lugnet.lego.direct)
| | | Re: Announcing LEGO Digital Designer 1.0
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| Lots of good comments, this is very exciting stuff, ne? (...) Those aren't the only two alternatives. It could well be closed (changes controlled by LEGO only, rather than by a standards committee) but still well documented rather than (...) (22 years ago, 29-Apr-03, to lugnet.cad, lugnet.lego.direct)
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