I found the enclosed adapter on Thingiverse.

My 2¢:

Hardware, slicers, non-programmatic design tools - clearly off topic, but
this is a community; it will occasionally have side conversations and
within reason that's OK.  Like nophead, I have a delete key, an "n" key
(next unread message), and an "r" key (mark thread as read), and filters.

BOSL2 and other OpenSCAD libraries - clearly on topic, but BOSL2 is a
large enough topic in its own right that perhaps it should get its own
mailing list for more extensive and specialized conversations.

Programmatic design tools, generically (Python tools, AngelCAD, et cetera)

• off topic, but certainly nearby.  I wouldn't want WhateverCAD tech
  support conversations here, but an occasional "if you're having problems
  thinking in OpenSCAD, maybe you would like XXX, here's how it compares, for
  more information go over <there>" would, I think, be entirely appropriate,
  as would "I just saw this cool feature in YYY, it works like <this>, maybe
  we could steal it for OpenSCAD".

Math - often critical to OpenSCAD design, so sure.

Alternate languages in the OpenSCAD UI, using the OpenSCAD geometry
engines - good question.  In the short term I think they're fine; in the
long term... don't know.  Dividing into multiple mailing lists makes sense,
but then makes it unclear where UI and geometry-engine discussions happen.
Murkier still if we get cross-language calls.

Whines about how forums are better than e-mail - just go away.  Join the Reddit
community https://www.reddit.com/r/openscad/ or the Facebook community
https://www.facebook.com/groups/OpenSCADAcademy or the Thingiverse
community https://www.thingiverse.com/groups/openscad.  Or host your
own forum, and by all means ask to be linked from the web page.  Or figure
out how to cleanly unite the mailing list with a forum.  But don't expect
somebody else do to it for you and don't expect other people to migrate.
Many or most of the active people are here because they prefer e-mail.  If
you want to talk to them, you have to be where they like to hang out.

OpenSCAD mailing list
To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org

I don't want to whine, I want people to let me ask my questions
regardless of how dumb they are. And you guys don't. You censor topics
and opinions under the pretext that the mail goes out to everybody. If
I wanna ask people how to find the absolute coordinates of a corner, I
don't need anyone here telling me that I've clearly never programmed
in my life etc. Because maybe on a forum, this question won't get shut
down subito, and someone else may tale it up, and then we'll find a
way to hack it. Here you shut down any request you don't like before
it can be tackled.

On Thu, Aug 17, 2023 at 10:44 PM Jordan Brown
openscad@jordan.maileater.net wrote:

 My 2¢:

 Hardware, slicers, non-programmatic design tools - clearly off
 topic, but this is a community; it will occasionally have side
 conversations and within reason that's OK.  Like nophead, I have a
 delete key, an "n" key (next unread message), and an "r" key (mark
 thread as read), and filters.

 BOSL2 and other OpenSCAD libraries - clearly *on* topic, but BOSL2
 is a large enough topic in its own right that perhaps it should
 get its own mailing list for more extensive and specialized
 conversations.

 Programmatic design tools, generically (Python tools, AngelCAD, et
 cetera) - off topic, but certainly nearby.  I wouldn't want
 WhateverCAD tech support conversations here, but an occasional "if
 you're having problems thinking in OpenSCAD, maybe you would like
 XXX, here's how it compares, for more information go over <there>"
 would, I think, be entirely appropriate, as would "I just saw this
 cool feature in YYY, it works like <this>, maybe we could steal it
 for OpenSCAD".

 Math - often critical to OpenSCAD design, so sure.

 Alternate languages in the OpenSCAD UI, using the OpenSCAD
 geometry engines - good question.  In the short term I think
 they're fine; in the long term... don't know.  Dividing into
 multiple mailing lists makes sense, but then makes it unclear
 where UI and geometry-engine discussions happen. Murkier still if
 we get cross-language calls.

 Whines about how forums are better than e-mail - just go away. 
 Join the Reddit community <https://www.reddit.com/r/openscad/> or
 the Facebook community
 <https://www.facebook.com/groups/OpenSCADAcademy> or the
 Thingiverse community
 <https://www.thingiverse.com/groups/openscad>.  Or host your own
 forum, and by all means ask to be linked from the web page.  Or
 figure out how to cleanly unite the mailing list with a forum. 
 But don't expect somebody else do to it for you and don't expect
 other people to migrate.  Many or most of the active people are
 here because they prefer e-mail.  If you want to talk to them, you
 have to be where they like to hang out.
 _______________________________________________
 OpenSCAD mailing list
 To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org

OpenSCAD mailing list
To unsubscribe send an email todiscuss-leave@lists.openscad.org

I don't want to whine, I want people to let me ask my questions
regardless of how dumb they are. And you guys don't. You censor topics
and opinions under the pretext that the mail goes out to everybody. If
I wanna ask people how to find the absolute coordinates of a corner, I
don't need anyone here telling me that I've clearly never programmed
in my life etc. Because maybe on a forum, this question won't get shut
down subito, and someone else may tale it up, and then we'll find a
way to hack it. Here you shut down any request you don't like before
it can be tackled.

On 8/17/2023 2:13 PM, edmund ronald wrote:

I don't want to whine, I want people to let me ask my questions regardless
of how dumb they are. And you guys don't. You censor topics and opinions
under the pretext that the mail goes out to everybody. If I wanna ask
people how to find the absolute coordinates of a corner, I don't need
anyone here telling me that I've clearly never programmed in my life etc.
Because maybe on a forum, this question won't get shut down subito, and
someone else may tale it up, and then we'll find a way to hack it. Here you
shut down any request you don't like before it can be tackled.

Which on-topic question got censored or shut down?

I've answered a lot of questions over the years - some of them dumb, and
some not dumb.  So have many others.  I can't think of a single time that a
question about OpenSCAD got shut down.

Sometimes the answer is "sorry, there isn't an easy way to do that, and it
wouldn't be easy to add one".  That probably isn't the answer that you want
to hear, but sometimes it's the answer.  Pretty much anything about
"finding absolute coordinates" will get that answer, because there (mostly)
isn't a way to derive them.

And if somebody else has a better answer for your question, maybe they
will speak up.

None of that is tied to e-mail versus a forum.  If anything, e-mail is
more open about it:  it's almost impossible to kill an e-mail thread, while
forums typically allow moderators to close discussion topics.

But if you want a forum style interface... go for it.  Just don't expect
me to create it for you, and don't expect me to join your forum, because
that's not the style of interface that I want.  If you want to talk to me,
you have to talk to me where and how I want to talk - just as if I wanted
your advice, and you hung out on a forum, I'd have to put up with the forum
interface.

After being on Arpanet for a while, and more lately on this successor
thingy, even though I don't know much about computers  I'm aware that
there is email and  other  ways to communicate which various people
like more than others. And I'm very happy about that because it means
everybody gets to use their favorite tools.  If there were a forum, I
would expect it to have an email gate-through of some sort. The reason
I like forums is they make it easier for most people to disregard
stuff, including my whines, and above all, they allow people to find
old questions and replies easily, see the state of a topic, and reopen
it easily.

Regarding the absolute stuff, look I don't know much about 3D printing
and I don't know much about CAD, but I do know that I want to be able
to quickly see roughly what is going to pop out of my printer. I've
had to do horrible calculations to do this in the past, and it would
be simpler if one could just at least eg. have a fake component "pin"
type, and one places it in the  design and then it spits out its
coordinates into the debug window when rendered. And then one could
figure out some critical dimensions by looking at where those pins are. 

On 8/17/2023 2:54 PM, edmund ronald wrote:

After being on Arpanet for a while, and more lately on this successor
thingy, even though I don't know much about computers  I'm aware that there
is email and  other  ways to communicate which various people like more
than others. And I'm very happy about that because it means everybody gets
to use their favorite tools.  If there were a forum, I would expect it to
have an email gate-through of some sort. The reason I like forums is they
make it easier for most people to disregard stuff, including my whines, and
above all, they allow people to find old questions and replies easily, see
the state of a topic, and reopen it easily.

Great.  You like forums.  I don't like forums.

A forum-email gateway would be fine (as long as the result on the email
side isn't awful, as many are).

Now, who is going to set up that gateway, and maintain it?  Remember that
nobody here is a paying customer, and nobody here is a paid employee.  We
all do stuff because we're interested in it, and occasionally out of the
goodness of our hearts.  Most people have only limited time available, and
so need to pick and choose which projects they take on.

If you want a forum-email gateway... great.  Set one up.  Maintain it.
Pay for it, if necessary.  If it's workable, the nice folks who maintain
openscad.org would likely be happy to work with you to host it there.
But don't expect them to do the work to find one, set it up, and maintain
it.  They're volunteers, and they have other projects they want to work on.

Regarding the absolute stuff, look I don't know much about 3D printing and
I don't know much about CAD, but I do know that I want to be able to
quickly see roughly what is going to pop out of my printer. I've had to do
horrible calculations to do this in the past, and it would be simpler if
one could just at least eg. have a fake component "pin" type, and one
places it in the  design and then it spits out its coordinates into the
debug window when rendered. And then one could figure out some critical
dimensions by looking at where those pins are.

Yes, it's sometimes a pain in the neck that you can't do that.  But
agreeing that it's a pain in the neck doesn't make it any easier to
implement.

This is a variation on the "measure the distance between two points"
request.  I've thought about it a bit, and except in special cases I can't
see how to do it.  You can't do it inside the language because information
doesn't flow that way in the language; there is no way to get information
out of a module.  You can't do it in the UI, because the previewer is
absolute black magic and doesn't actually know what points are in front,
what points are hidden, and what points don't exist at all because they've
been intersected or differenced away.  (And even with a rendered model,
it's not easy to find a point on the model corresponding to a click.)  You
can't even do it with a pin like you describe, because at the time that a
particular node is rendered it doesn't know where it will be translated or
how it will be rotated or scaled.  If you accepted some restrictions, you
could carry the transformation information down into lower nodes, but the
result would be a thoroughly unsatisfying user experience - the user would
have to consume the raw coordinates and do the distance math themselves.
(Restrictions:  wouldn't be meaningful inside an extrusion or, I think, the
second child of a minkowski.  If my geometry-object work ever goes in, it
wouldn't be able to penetrate that barrier, because it divorces the
execution context from the transformation context.)

If you're interested in some thoughts on the subject, and a demonstration
of some related tricks, you can look at
https://lists.openscad.org/empathy/thread/IUPFIPEISP2XYU3SRVFWG54TLGSXMWOT

So why hasn't anybody turned that into a built-in OpenSCAD feature?
Because nobody has been interested in doing it, especially given the
resulting poor user experience.  (I couldn't, with a straight face, call it
a solution to the "measure distance" problem.)  All volunteers, working on
projects that interest them, remember?

Thank you for the interesting link. However, assuming my small pin  is
"vividred" in color, when I render the file into stl, I can locate the
"vividred" rice grain  point inside the model and thereby know its
position? Or maybe just project the model in 2d, and find the point
thusly? In other words, can't OpenSCAD cause something to be written
into the export file which itself is I would assume of necessity in
real physical coordinates?