Subject:
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Re: Automatic download of unofficial parts in LDView
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw
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Date:
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Sun, 14 May 2006 15:13:23 GMT
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Viewed:
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1924 times
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In lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw, Travis Cobbs wrote:
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I’m working on a feature in LDView where it will automatically check the
parts tracker for unofficial parts when it encounters a file that it can’t
find. This has the potential to produce a fairly large amount of requests to
the parts tracker, so I have some questions.
First of all, is this acceptable for LDView to do? It can definitely make
the user experience much more enjoyable when opening other people’s files
that use unofficial parts. But on the other hand, it will generate an as-yet
unknown amount of additional traffic to the parts tracker.
Looking at LDView’s SourceForge.net download page, I see that as of now there
have been 1734 downloads of the LDView 3.0 executables (1811 total LDView 3
downloads minus 77 source downloads). From that, I think it’s safe to say
that the number of unique LDView users is probably at least 500 and more
likely in excess of 1000.
I will definitely configure it to not check for any particular file more
often than some certain threshold. The threshold will be at least one day,
but could probably realistically be set to a week. This threshold will be
client-side, though. That means that every user will have their own unique
list of files that have been checked “recently”. Note that even if it has
downloaded an unofficial file, it will still need to check the tracker to see
if the file has been updated since it was downloaded. This will use the same
“recently” threshold.
Furthermore, there’s really no way to tell purely based on the filename if
the file is a part. So any models that reference missing sub-assemblies will
cause LDView to check the parts tracker for these sub-assemblies. On top of
that, there’s no way to tell if the file is a primitive (unless it’s in the
48/ directory). So every primitive will first have to be queried as a part.
When that fails, it will be queried as a primitive. Additionally, every file
that doesn’t have an s/ prefix will be queried as a primitive if no part
exists. This particular problem could be fixed server-side, though, if there
was some new base URL added that automatically checked for the file as a
part, and then automatically checked as a primitive if the part didn’t exist.
(If LDView successfully downloads a file once, it will remember what it is,
thus preventing the double check when checking to see if the file has been
updated on the tracker.)
So, to the admins of ldraw.org, what do you think?
--Travis
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Hi Travis,
It’s good to know you still think about adding even more features to LDView.
At some feature-complete point many programmers prefer to switch to a newer thus
more exiting development rather than cherrish and grow the baby.
However, in my humble opinion the whole point in having official/unofficial
distinction is only official parts are supported. By supporting unofficial parts
in a user-transparent way the risk is that you blurr this essential distinction.
The official and recommended way to include an unofficial part is to include it
as a subpart because it’s the only way to guarantee model-file continuity. The
viewer tool is a wrong place to solve a problem that wouldn’t exist if the
modeller tool was correctly used.
(Just my 2 cents)
-- damien
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Message has 2 Replies:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Automatic download of unofficial parts in LDView
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| I'm working on a feature in LDView where it will automatically check the parts tracker for unofficial parts when it encounters a file that it can't find. This has the potential to produce a fairly large amount of requests to the parts tracker, so I (...) (19 years ago, 14-May-06, to lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw, FTX)
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