modelfiler should be able to output interleaved data

[ch-nry]

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Better than putting positionXYZ data in 3 different table, it would be lot's more convenient to be able to load interleaved data in 1 position table.
This is specially useful since we need position (vec3), color (vec4), normal(vec4), texture coordinate(vec2).
It's not really a problem if loading a model need time, since this is usually not done in realtime

[umlaeute]

would this work from an interface perspective:

0. send a [position foo( message to [modelfiler]
1. iff there is a table named foo, write interleaved data to this table.
2. otherwise attempt to write the channels into separate tables fooX, fooY, fooZ (current behaviour)

this makes the behaviour depending on the presence (or absence) of given tables, which might be unexpected.

one might argue, that the original design (given a name <table>, the object writes to to <table>[XYZ]) was bad in the first place, but there we are.

alternatives solutions could be:

• first check for <table>[XYZ] and then fall back to writing interleaved data <table> (that is: reverse the order)
• do both (if there's a <table> array, write interleaved data to it; and if there are <table>[XYZ] arrays, write separate data to it)
• break compat and require the user to explicitly name the tables:
  • 1 table means interleaved
  • 3 tables means separate data

the current code already does a lot of magic (e.g. [position foo(, [position fooX fooY fooZ( and [position foo X Y Z( are all equivalent....

otoh, there's no help patch so we probably we can change the current behaviour without too many tears.

[ch-nry]

otoh, there's no help patch so we probably we can change the current behaviour without too many tears.

yes. I think we should focus on usage and not on compatibility.
I think [position foo( should write interleaved data on foo and [position fooZ foobar foo( should write X Y Z data to this 3 tables.
I don't know what [position foo X Y Z( should do.
imo, [position foo( to write on fooX, fooY and fooZ is confusing and should be removed.
[positionX fooX( could be introduced, but I don't know if it will be useful.
(for the help file, there is a draft on my pull request that I can adapt)