On Wed, 2 Jun 1999 22:51:05 GMT, jamien@interworx.com.au (Jamie Obrien)
wrote:
> Hi, I think a good extension would be the ability to create folders in
> the models ListView so that you can better sort and categorise the
> models. Or you could create an explorer style layout with a treeview
> on the left with a listview on the right. This would help a bit with
> the management of models.
Hmm. Would it be acceptable to present this view, but not support
rendering the files in the subdirectories? That is, if you have a subfile
in a subdirectory, should you have to include the subdirectory in the model
when you use the subfile? Oh, heck, here's an example:
You have these files:
c:\ldraw\models\main.dat
c:\ldraw\models\sub1\refme.dat
To use refme.dat in main.dat, would you want to specify
refme.dat
or sub1\refme.dat
Or were you not thinking about multi-file models?
Another concern I've always had is that I don't want to duplicate the
functionality of Explorer.
What would be really cool is to support MPD's (and ZIP, I guess) in the
treeview, so MPD's could be built and split with drag'n'drop. :)
I should more about Win32 shell extensions, so DAT and MPD could be
properly integrated with Explorer. Then we wouldn't need LDAO. Well,
maybe we would, but the interface would be editor-centric, instead of
file-list centric.
> Also some built in code to handle simple gif and jpegs instead
> of needing imagemagick. I think windows ie4+ has the ability to load
> both (not sure about hbitmaps -> gif and jpegs yet) but it would be
> easier than dealing with a seperate download. Maybe a DLL with simple
> reading<>Conversion<>writing abilities?
This would be good, but not too likely to happen.
I tried writing a BMP2GIF routine, but it wasn't worth the effort (I never
finished debugging it). I never even attempted a JPG version. Haven't
found a freebie graphics DLL, and I'm too cheap to pay money.
For the VEC files, it is conceivable that I would create an internal
BMP2RLE converter. I've got complete documentation on both of these
formats, and they are pretty straightforward (straightforward to my
brain--LZW compression is cool, but it's easy to screw up).
But for the HTML Generator, Image Magick is likely to stick around for a
while. If you don't want to use IM, you can always use a graphics program
to convert the output BMP files to GIF yourself.
Steve
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