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 21:34:59 GMT
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Viewed:
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5817 times
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In lugnet.cad.dev.mac, Travis Cobbs wrote:
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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.)
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Indeed.
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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).
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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.
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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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That may be so, but it does not mean it can’t be changed. And I would argue it’s
better to change it now if you’re going to change it.
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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.
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If the file is not found in the standard search path(s) or your “unofficial”
directory (wherever that is!) it should be downloaded. If it does exist, and
it’s an unofficial file, you need to check if it’s been updated on the tracker.
I’m not sure how you currently do that, but the directory it’s in shouldn’t make
any difference. You may not currently be checking the header to see if it’s an
unofficial file, but I don’t think that’s a major performance hit.
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This could be changed, and an option could be added to have the
files go into the main directories.
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I would like to see the user have the option to either
- Put them in the standard ldraw directory (default), or
- Specify the complete path to their chosen alternative.
That way the user has total control over how they arrange their files. Note that
when 3.2 is first run it could check if the current hard-coded directory exists
and contains files, and if so, set the path to that. Or even ask the user if
they want to move them.
ROSCO
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: LDView 3.1 on Mac OS X!
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| (...) As a user (and a programmer; though I've yet to do any work on LDView), I prefer the way Travis is doing things. Not that that makes it right; I'm just saying that you can't (and shouldn't) lump the users and the programmers into two competing (...) (18 years ago, 3-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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| 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. (...) I disagree that it's not useful to have the unofficial parts in another directory. (...) (18 years ago, 2-Mar-07, to lugnet.cad.dev.mac, FTX)
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