[Freegis-list] Lx-Viewer (DWG viewer for Linux)

[Guy Edwards]

On Mon, 2002-11-25 at 10:00, Radim Blazek wrote:
[snip]
> I would like to say that LX-Viewer is really very good program 
> (I am running 0.95a). Thank you.

0.98 requires qt3 (most modern distributions have this already) but
should be a fair improvement. There's some new features and it installs
properly.
 
> I have some questions:

I run the website for the project, I'm not really a developer but I'll
try and answer what I can (e.g. if I've made an obvious mistake or said
something stupid, don't flame too much... )

> 1) How to get libraries for Linux. Is it right that I must become at least 
> "associate" member if I want libraries for Linux? Linux is not listed at  
> http://www.opendwg.org/downloads/guest.htm "Member downloads".

You do have to be an associate member to download the files, we aren't
allowed to distribute the files ourselves. I doubt that there could be
many disadvantages to joining, I've not received any spam. I think they
just want to keep track of the amount of people using the resources.

The libraries are just the OpenDWG viewkit and the OpenDWG toolkit which
are then compiled with the source of Lx-Viewer, they don't need to be
for a specific platform.

Looking at their website you want:
"AutoCAD 2002 compatible OpenDWG Toolkit/Viewkit Version 2.009.2 
available for download"
once you've logged in you click on 
OpenDWG Toolkit
and then
OpenDWG Viewkit

> 2) Does any command line conversion tool (dwg<->dxf, versions) exist in 
> LX-Viewer project?

Yes, the command line conversion utility, if you have a look on the file
downloads page at
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=30996
you'll see it.

I'm pressing to get this merged into the main program. The main program
now accepts different command line switched and can report on an entire
directory of drawings.

> 3) Do you think that OpenDWG could become sometimes realy 'open', something 
> like GPL or is it non free forever?

I'm not an expert on the OpenDWG libraries but we have had discussions
on the developers mailing list about what would happen if the OpenDWG
libraries suddenly disappeared for some reason.

The Lx-Viewer program is 100% GPL, the OpenDWG code is not, but the
license isn't that bad as I understand it (compared to certain other CAD
code we could be using) and it's a very quick way of putting the project
together. 

As I understand it you can change from a restrictive license to GPL but
going back again is the impossible part?

> 4) Once I read somewhere that support for editing and other formats (DGN) is
> planned for lxviewer. Is it still true? 

Lx-Viewer is mainly a viewer, printer, format changer etc. If we get
more people involved then we can do more things. We've just had another
good Qt developer join the project so things might start evolving quite
quickly. This should also mean a windows version soon (Jan-April?).

This will give you an idea of where we could head in the future:
http://lx-viewer.sourceforge.net/program.php
but we're open to new ideas.

We've started talking about DGN on the developers mailing list but
that's it so far really. If lots of people express an interest then it
would become a higher priority. What DGN abilities would you like to
see?

The SVG format is going to be added in version 0.99, it's being worked
on now. 

If you've got any more questions, ask away.

Guy