Subject:
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Re: LDView 3.1 on Mac OS X!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev.mac
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Date:
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Fri, 2 Mar 2007 20:48:00 GMT
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Viewed:
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5708 times
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Before I say anything else, I want to point out that as the author of LDView my
comments here are necessarily biased. So keep that in mind as you read them.
In lugnet.cad.dev.mac, Ross Crawford wrote:
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In lugnet.cad.dev.mac, Allen Smith wrote:
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It’s me the user that wants to know which unofficial parts I’ve downloaded
and am using, and thus which may require updating, deleting, or something.
For me it is purely a user-management issue. My program doesn’t really care
if a part is Official on Unofficial.
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Sure, but as I said, you can’t be 100% certain that the contents of the
standard LDraw directory are all official and vice versa, so the best way to
manage them (in my opinion) is lump them all together, and have a program
that helps you manage them by showing you (according to the header) which
ones are official and which aren’t. Even better, make it a standard library
that ANY program can use. I don’t see any advantage in trying to separate
them by directory, when the definitive information is in the file.
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I disagree that it’s not useful to have the unofficial parts in another
directory. While you are correct that the only way to be sure a file is
official is to look at the header, the fact is that for a very long time (maybe
even currently) the parts in ldraw027.exe didn’t contain any information that
could be used to tell that the files were official. I know this because the
parts on my hard drive that came from ldraw027.exe didn’t contain header
information. Additionally, there are AT LEAST 3 header comment variants that
designate official parts. (There will be a fourth once the library gets its new
license, but at least ALL parts in the library will then have the same comment.)
Next, we have the problem that even if a program were made to tell you which
parts are official and which aren’t, it wouldn’t be the natural thing for people
to use. People will tend to want to use their standard file browser, not some
LDraw-aware program (which incidentally doesn’t even exist right now).
Next, as far as I know, LDView 3.1 is the only publicly available program that
automatically downloads parts from the parts tracker. (Someone please correct
me if I’m wrong on this.) When I implemented that feature, I arbitrarily
decided to put the files in a directory named Unofficial inside the main LDraw
directory. It’s worth noting that by default, no other programs would notice
these files (which is actually a bad thing). However, no matter what happens,
they’re going to continue to go there until at the very minimum LDView 3.2 is
released. That means that a fair number of people already have files in this
location. (LDView 3.1 has been downloaded over 1700 times, and the feature is
enabled by default.)
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Just to re-iterate, I have no problem with people using as many extra parts
directories as they want, I just think it should be up to the user, and not
forced on them by either the program they’re using, or LDraw standards.
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Nothing prevents the user from downloading files from the parts tracker into
their standard LDraw PARTS and P directories. LDView is the only program that I
know of that automatically downloads parts, and it doesn’t give the user a
choice about where to put them. My current implementation relies on the files
not being found in any of the standard search locations in order to know that
the file is one that LDView itself should try to download and keep updated.
This could be changed, and an option could be added to have the files go into
the main directories.
--Travis
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: LDView 3.1 on Mac OS X!
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| (...) Indeed. (...) Well that's the part I disagree with. Everyone is different, and making assumptions about what people will want to use is always bad for program developers. The choice should be the user's, not the programmer's. (...) That may be (...) (18 years ago, 2-Mar-07, to lugnet.cad.dev.mac, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: LDView 3.1 on Mac OS X!
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| (...) Sure, but as I said, you can't be 100% certain that the contents of the standard LDraw directory are all official and vice versa, so the best way to manage them (in my opinion) is lump them all together, and have a program that helps you (...) (18 years ago, 2-Mar-07, to lugnet.cad.dev.mac, FTX)
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