The LDraw Standards Committee (LSC) has validated a suitable LDraw parts header
format proposed by the library admins to implement the Contributor Agreement (CA).

The following shortcomings in the current header required attention:

1. The author line fails to identify the LDraw.org username – the basis upon which CA affirmation is assessed.
2. The header does not identify whether the part is covered by the CA or not.
3. The change history comment lines are unstructured and fail to clearly identify the LDraw.org username.
4. The header does not conform to the new meta command syntax. (Only acceptable to partially correct this.)
5. The header fails to clearly identify unofficial parts.

The new part header structure for official parts is :

-------------------Beginning-------------------

0 PartDescription
0 Name: Filename.dat
0 Author: RealName [UserName]
0 !LDRAW_ORG Part|Subpart|Primitive|48_Primitive|Shortcut UPDATE YYYY-RR
0 !LICENSE Redistributable under CCAL version 2.0 : see CAreadme.txt
or
0 !LICENSE Not redistributable : see NonCAreadme.txt

0 !HELP Optional free text description of file usage
0 !HELP Second row after user's line break to simulate paragraph

0 BFC ( CERTIFY ( CCW | CW ) | NOCERTIFY )

0 !CATEGORY Category name
0 !KEYWORDS words, more words,…,
0 !KEYWORDS words in second row, …, final words

0 !CMDLINE LDraw run-time command(s)

0 !HISTORY YYYY-MM-DD [UserName] Free text description of change. This can wrap to a
0 !HISTORY YYYY-MM-DD [UserName] second row with the same date if necessary. However authors should lean toward writing longer
0 !HISTORY YYYY-MM-DD [UserName] single !HISTORY lines(and not feel constrained to the historic 80-character limit on line length)
or
0 !HISTORY YYYY-MM-DD {RealName} Free text description of change

0 // Comments

1 <colour> x y z a b c d e f g h i <file>

Where:
PartDescription is the descriptive name of the part (limited to 64 characters)
Filename is the file name
RealName is the author's real name
UserName is the author's LDraw username. It needs to be optional for those past authors that don't have a PT username
YYYY-RR is the LDraw update year and release within year
CAreadme.txt or NonCAreadme.txt is the human readable version of the CCAL added to the parts library package
The square brackets are included in the file to indicate LDraw usernames.

The following meta-commands are optional:
!HELP (Authors should constrain themselves to a 50-character limit to keep the text readable.)
!CMDLINE
BFC (It is highly recommended to include this statement with a NOCERTIFY for non-BFC certified parts, but not required.)
!KEYWORDS
!CATEGORY (This is required if the first word of the part description isn't in the official category list
here: CATEGORY and KEYWORDS Language Extension. Note, however, that you must use one of the listed categories.)

All other meta-commands above are mandatory. No other meta-commands are allowed in the part header.

Examples:

0 Animal Scorpion
0 Name: 30169.dat
0 Author: Chris Dee [cwdee]
0 !LDRAW_ORG Part UPDATE 2006-01
0 !LICENSE Redistributable under CCAL version 2.0 : see CAreadme.txt

0 !HELP Obviously there is no need for additional
0 !HELP information in this part. But it will give
0 !HELP you an idea of a primitive formatting.
0 !HELP
0 !HELP We should limit the length of
0 !HELP a line to 50 characters for the sake of readability.

0 BFC CERTIFY CW

0 !CATEGORY Animal
0 !KEYWORDS Sting, Poison, Adventurers, Egypt
0 !KEYWORDS Zodiac

0 !CMDLINE –c1

0 !HISTORY 2000-08-?? {Axel Poque} fixes to resolve L3P error messages
0 !HISTORY 2000-08-?? {Manfred Moolhuysen} fixes to resolve L3P error messages,
0 !HISTORY 2000-08-?? {Manfred Moolhuysen} fixed gap where body meets head
0 !HISTORY 2002-04-25 [PTadmin] Official update 2002-02
0 !HISTORY 2004-05-18 [guyvivan] Made BFC compliant
0 !HISTORY 2004-05-18 [guyvivan] Used more primitives
0 !HISTORY 2006-??-?? [PTadmin] Official update 2006-01

0 // Tail
1 16 1 0 23 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 4-4cyli.dat

or

0 Boat Base 8 x 10
0 Name: 2622.dat
0 Author: Chris Alano
0 !LDRAW_ORG Part UPDATE 2000-02
0 !LICENSE Not redistributable : see NonCAreadme.txt

0 BFC NOCERTIFY

0 !KEYWORDS Pirates, Caribbean, Ship

2 24 100 24 80 80 24 20

-------------------End-------------------

It is now the task of the LDraw Part Administrators to mass convert the entire LDraw parts library,
as well as the certified unofficial parts currently at the Parts Tracker. The next library update will
then be conform to the CA, which means that the LDraw 0.27 Base Distribution (ldraw027.exe)
will be integrated in the Complete Updates since LDraw 0.27 (Complete.exe) and ease its usage,
as well as be redistributable with other software in respect of the new copyright terms.

Unfortunately the admins will also have to strip the 97 parts created by authors who have not signed the CA.
As you can imagine this is a time-consuming process since almost 3300 official/certified parts created
over a period of almost ten years do not stick to a commune scheme and therefore have to be checked
one by one. Please bear with us for any delays this might cause before we can ship the first 2006 update.

Willy Tschager
on behalf of the LDraw Standard Committee (LSC)/LDraw Steering Committee (SteerCo)