Bug#553311: python-ldraw
On Saturday 10 March 2012, David Paleino wrote:
> I just looked at those .dat files and -- even though they're text-only
> files -- I can't imagine a human typing something like this (from
> 4490.dat):
>
> /---
>
> | 0 BFC INVERTNEXT
> | 1 16 20 24 0 6 0 0 0 -20 0 0 0 6 box5.dat
> | 0 BFC INVERTNEXT
> | 1 16 -20 24 0 6 0 0 0 -20 0 0 0 6 box5.dat
> | 4 16 30 24 10 26 24 6 14 24 6 10 24 10
[...]
> They can really be the source only if, for example, there's some GUI (or
> any other suitable) program able to load/save them, by which one can create
> a new ldraw-part from scratch.
I think there are tools to do this, but I'm not sure if any of them run on
Debian systems. Part authoring is not an activity I'm familiar with.
> > Checking now, it seems that the parts library described at
> >
> > http://www.ldraw.org/Downloads-req-viewdownloaddetails-lid-98.html
> >
> > is not redistributable because it contains non-redistributable parts.
>
> This is not a problem: the non-redistributable parts can be stripped from
> the "original tarball", which can then be used (and distributed) by Debian.
I see LeoCAD itself has its own parts library, mentioned here:
http://leocad.org/trac/wiki/Legal
Whether or not it's preferable to use that library is not something I can
help with, unfortunately. It might make it slightly easier to repackage if
it does not contain non-redistributable parts to start with, but the file
format question remains.
[...]
> So, here's the current status. LeoCAD now builds fine, so the only missing
> bit is the pieces library. I/we need to find out what the real source is
> (if it's not the .dat files), how to compile it, and what leocad expects it
> to be (location, format, structure, [..]).
My impression is that the LDraw format used in .dat files is the common
currency, if not the nicest format to edit, and that at least some part
authors actually write it by hand. All the parts in the official parts
database (http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptlist.cgi) are in that format, as
far as I can tell. Where you would go to find those files in another format
is unclear.
I presume that part authors who don't actually write parts by hand use many
different tools to create them before submitting them to the database as
.dat files. There's a short discussion about that in a thread in a forum:
http://forums.ldraw.org/read.php?19,134,205#msg-205
I think it may be useful to think about the parts library in a similar way
to various fonts that are shipped by Debian. For example, the source for
the ttf-bitstream-vera package contains only .ttf files, whereas those for
the ttf-dejavu package contains FontForge .sfd files. Clearly, we could have
a similar discussion about those .ttf files, so it would be interesting to
know how that issue was resolved for that package, and others like it.
Regards,
David
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