In lugnet.cad, Tore Eriksson wrote:
> If there is a universally working* META-command system for creating
> minifigs, be it LDAO's, LDDPMINIFIGGEN or any other, I'd like to
> push for it to be more or less an official standard.  As I haven't
> been that engaged in this side of LCad, I am anything but up-to-date
> on the status. For me, it has been like reinventing the wheel each
> time I wnat to LDraw a minifig.

There doesn't seem to be a standard, but I'd like one too.  I'm hoping
to make one by extending the LDAO MINIFIG META-commands, grabbing the
part category lists from one of the extensible minifig part INI files
available, and running it through a command line minifig generator
program (similar to LSYNTH) to convert the META-commands into LDRAW
commands.

I can borrow the structure of the main() function in LSYNTH to open a
file and locate the MINIFIG META-commands.  I also have code that can
parse the MLCAD.INI file for the minifig part category and orientation
information.  (I reused the L3P data structures for that one.)  I just
need to add some code to convert the META-commands into LDRAW commands
via the usual matrix manipulation stuff.

Once I have this working, I can make a portable GUI for it using a
platform independent toolkit and an ldglite window in polling mode for
preview.  I made one for LSYNTH in a few lines of TCL code.  This
would have a lot more listboxes and whatnot, but it might be doable
in TCL.

I can put the code together on the sourceforge somewhere if you want
to help.

Don




