Subject:
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Re: Lego XML?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev
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Date:
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Wed, 30 Apr 2003 00:19:01 GMT
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Viewed:
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1329 times
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In lugnet.cad, Gary Thomas writes:
> > I'm working on my XML certification and thought "BrickML" might be a good
> > exercise for me to practice.
>
> I also worked on this myself about a year ago. I had big plans and then got
> tied up with work and school. I created a sourceforge project, but only
> produced a couple of DTDs. Latest is here:
>
> http://brick-xml.sourceforge.net/DTD/brick-xml.dtd
I think this is an outstanding idea. I'd be kind of sad to see LDraw's file
format -- the ultimate in text file elegance -- replaced as the de-facto
standard for exchanging models online, but an XML-based approach might
actually be able to handle a functional superset of .ldr, .mpd, .dat, and
.lxf files.
If we (the community) had all our LEGO parts stored in a master format as
BrickML files, then we could run a converter to generate .ldr files from
.bml files. XML would also be sweet for storing parts meta-data...all the
stuff that's current kludged into 0-lines (comments).
> I wanted to post this after I saw the "LEGO Digital Designer 1.0" post
> today - I'm intrigued at the possibility that LXF format will be XML based
> (please, please, please...).
I don't think that's going to happen. I -hope- I'm wrong, but from Jake
McKee's announcement, where LXF is referred to as an "internal file format,"
and the fact that they'll be providing tools for conversion (rather than
leaving it up to the community to write the tools), I don't get the impression
at all that TLC wants us to know anything about the inner workings of the
file format. I'm also almost positive that when I talked to Brad Justus
and Torben Sørensen (I hate name-dropping, but I'm trying to relay facts)
about this during a meeting in Dec 2000, prior to the CAD summit, Brad
indicated that LXF would -not- be a text-based format, specifically because
TLC did not want people to create their own parts. I immediately mentioned
reverse engineering and we kind of danced around the issue a bit until the
subject was changed. I made as strong a case as I could for an open, text-
based format, but I don't think that a text-based format satisfies the goals
that LEGO has in mind with this.
> Anyways, hope someone finds this useful. If there's any interest, let me
> know and we can brainstorm
I don't know how much time I can allocate toward brainstorming with you on
this, but I think the idea is definitely worth exploring. If LXF turns out
to be a completely binary and hard-to-reverse-engineer format, then it's
ultimately not going to be very useful to the community.
> (BTW, my email above is wrong so don't use it - the lugnet admins still
> haven't changed it).
If you fill out the news-posting-setup form again (make sure you're signed-in
as a member first),
http://news.lugnet.com/news/post/setup/
then it'll store that new information in your member record, and that's what
will appear when you post. One thing on my to-do list for May is to make this
a lot easier and less confusing, and also to give a drop-down list box for
people with multiple e-mail addresses (hi Jake :-).
--Todd
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Lego XML?
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| (...) This must one of the slowest threads ever - 3 posts in over 4 years :) Exciting stuff. I also worked on this myself about a year ago. I had big plans and then got tied up with work and school. I created a sourceforge project, but only produced (...) (21 years ago, 29-Apr-03, to lugnet.cad)
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