Planning

[gogades]

As Layerling is reaching maturity and has already surpassed TK in most ways (in my opinion), I think it would benefit the project to do some planning and trying to decide on a road map. Right now new features are coming in very quickly without any discussion but I'm afraid that might lead to some design problems down the road.

The new shape library, in particular, is an important one. I'm thinking that having the option of having linked shapes would provide a sort of very simple parametric-style workflow. For example, if you insert a shape from the library and click the option "link to original", then any change to the original gets reflected on its copies that are linked. Features like that need some planning and some strategy, however, I think the project would benefit from it.

[henmedia]

Thanks, that's a fair point, and good to hear it from someone who uses layerling a lot.

To be honest, there is no roadmap, and I'd like to keep it that way. I do have a short to-do list, but nothing on it is fixed. Ideas reach me from many places: the forum, here on GitHub, YouTube videos, emails, and my own wishes while I use layerling. I want to keep the freedom to build something right away when it comes up and makes sense. That speed is a big part of why layerling got where it is so quickly.

That doesn't rule out planning, though. If some of you want to take on a bigger extension together, please do: open a proposal here, discuss it, split up the work and send pull requests. The cutting tool in #98 is a good example. rmpel proposed it, you already have a branch porting WC3D's split feature, and WC3D is improving his version too. That's exactly the kind of joint effort I'm happy to support and merge.

Linked shapes would be a good candidate for that too, as they need some thinking first. A few questions have to be settled:

Original changes: How does an original change? Today a custom shape is saved once and not edited in place.
Missing library: What happens when a design with linked copies is opened on another computer, or by someone else, where the original isn't in the library? Every copy would still have to carry its own geometry, and the link could only mean "replace me if there is a newer version".
Moved, turned or scaled copies: These should keep that when they are updated.
Edited copies: What about a copy that has been changed itself, for example filleted or ungrouped? I think the link should be broken on purpose there, not lost silently.
When to update: Automatically, or with a prompt like "3 copies of 'Holder' are out of date – update?"

A smaller first step could be linked copies inside one design, a "linked duplicate", before taking it across designs and devices.

Thoughts on those questions are very welcome, here or in a proposal of its own.