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Tore Eriksson wrote:
> You really got a good point here.
> I don't know if there is anyone that still uses original LDraw. And, I don't
> think the LDraw parts library is LDraw compatible anyway. At least not running
> under DOS - I think there was a limit of 2000 files in a folder, and the Parts
> directory is much larger than that, almost 3000 files.
IIRC, the limit was only on the size of the root directory -- but I could well
be wrong.
I think there are two separate, and related, questions here: Do we want to keep
supporting DOS as a platform? Do we want to keep supporting LDraw 0.27?
The first is a mildly reasonable goal. The second seems very strange. Why not
put out a 0.28, with the more trivial restrictions, this amongst them, removed?
If that's impossible for legal reasons, will somebody step up to the bat, and
write a replacement?
Either way, I think we should stop punishing parts writers by forcing them to
work around bugs in programs that has been without a maintainer for 7 years. It
needs a new maintainer or a replacement. I realize that it may sound like I'm
being insensitive, but if Jessman had lived, I find it unlikely that that
program would still be in use. Let us honor his greater accomplishment, which
is a file format, a way of thinking about lego, and a community, not a few
thousand lines of code.
> (Hmm, well, we could have a META tag in the header saying that "this part
> contains dithered colors" to help that utility skip scanning those part files
> without that tag, like "0 COMPABILITY DITHERED_COLORS" or something shorter...
> )
As a technical point, I don't much like it, though I could see a 0
INCOMPATIBILITY DITHERED_COLORS, which nothing would need understand for it to
be useful -- if something doesn't render right, the user may look at the file,
and with an INCOMPATIBILITY tag, might have a clue as to where to start
googling. If there's a COMPATIBILITY tag instead, you can't do that, because
the ones misrendering won't contain clues of that sort. The ones that render OK
will, but if they render OK, it's less important.
(For that matter, what's the failure mode using non-subfile lines with dithered
parts -- do they just show up in one half of the color they should be, do they
not show up?)
Such tags shouldn't be relied on when you have an easy way of checking for the
condition they tag anyway, because they drift out of date easily. A program can
just look if there's non-subpart lines having colors between 256 and 511. We
want hints for humans, so should put them where they're most useful, and least
likely to be outdated.
> /Tore
Not removing any of the NGs, because I'm not sure which is best. Relatedly,
what's the best place to start some "thinking aloud" about a possible extension
to the file format for describing electrical (and possibly pneumatic) parts?
I've got what I think are good ideas, but I'm not sure how to describe some
bits, or if I'm being too specific in places...
-=- James Mastros
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