Welcome to Sweet Home 3D. Your tastes in programming seem to match Sweet Home 3D requirements!
After reviewing questions and problems launched in the forums, I got that the project manager is the only Java developer working on the code.
I guess you refer to the recent thread How to join the developer team?.But according to the member list I found from sourceforge.com, there is one or two people who takes the design work. Do they have the right to finalise the code or still only the project manager takes this job? How is it organised?
artist373 and geantick, the two members you speak about, are some contributors to the 3D models. They don't design the application but designed some models to improve the small default furniture library.I'm the only committer at this time. I wouldn't mind to give the right to commit to translators so they can update directly the properties files of their language, but I don't believe they would love to do that themselves, because they are translators and not CVS experts. And that would require from me to filter CVS rights according to the language a committer is managing, a not a very exciting and time demanding task.
So how do the two file management system work in the Sweet Home 3D project?
What do yo mean by "file management system"?It is said the Sweet Home 3D project matches a case study in a French book written by the project manager. I haven't read that book, but I guess there might be some other projects described in that book.
No, the 500 pages of the book are actually about Sweet Home 3D. Very few little examples are not relative to the project.
what kind of 3D techniques were used in this project?
The "live" 3D view is based on Java 3D library (and indirectly on OpenGL).When I tried to create a plug-in jar file, I didn't find the export destination directory ".eteks/sweethome3d/plugins" in the browser. I was working on Linux and I tried Ctrl+H as well as creating the directory by myself, it didn't work. However, I exported the jar file to other existing directory, and copy it to ".eteks/sweethome3d/plugins", it worked. So why I cannot see the directory in the browser?
The "~/.eteks/sweethome3d/" directory and its subdirectories are created on demand when a .sh3p file or other files are imported. A .sh3p file can be imported by a simple double click but miserably file associations doesn't work that well under Linux. Maybe I should add an Import plug-in menu item somewhere in Sweet Home 3D, but would prefer to add a brand new panel in preferences dialog box able to manage all imported files in Sweet Home 3D. Meanwhile, maybe I should create all the subdirectories of ~/.eteks/sweethome3d/ that could be useful, as soon as ~/.eteks/sweethome3d/ is created (i.e. when preferences are changed or a file is saved).And I have downloaded some plug-ins, all of these plug-ins files' names were ended with ".sh3p". I don't know how to generate this type of files. If I create a plug-in jar file and want to share with the user community in the future, is it necessary to generate the .sh3p files in advance?
As explained in the plug-in developer's guide, a .sh3p file is just a .zip file containing a ApplicationPlugin.properties file, .class files and other resource files. The main advantage of using a different extension is that you can associate in the system the .sh3p extension with Sweet Home 3D.Finally, I really like this program and would like to make some contributions. But as a beginner, I don't know how to do it. Maybe some translation work first? Because I come from China and I saw some of the web pages have Chinese version but most don't, especially the documents. And in the future days, after I get understanding of the code and structure, I will dedicate myself to create new plug-ins. How is it?
That sounds great. What kind of Chinese can you write? Traditional or Simplified? I know that 赵斯聪, the Simplified Chinese translator is more and more busy, and he would probably welcome a rescue contributor. Starting by the translation of the user's guide would be very useful for Chinese readers, and a good way for you to learn more about Sweet Home 3D. You can also start by a more simple page like the Features page, but people don't view it as much as the user's guide.Meanwhile, explore wishlist forum and/or open features request to find some ideas for your first plug-in.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator
