Re: LANG: Dynamic characteristics

[email protected]
Thu, 14 Jul 94 14:42:30 -0500


[email protected] (Mark Waks) writes:
> BTW, people should bear in mind that, although we *do*
> probably have to decide now whether or not the dynamic
> language is integrated with VRML per se (because it
> affects the design of VRML), we do *not* have to choose
> which language to go with if it's outside of VRML.

In fact, it's not even clear to me that we should be aiming to
standardize on just one scripting language. As long as VRML defines
a standardized ASCII API for defining and manipulating geometry and
scene parameters, I think we can gain by allowing different scripting
tools. Of course, it's nice to be guaranteed that a certain minimal
set of scripting languages will be accepted.

In our experience with Geomview, this decoupling is very useful.
There are Geomview modules written in Perl, awk, sh, TCL, and other
scripting languages, in addition to compiled languages like C. Each
language is useful in its domain. (The animated clock, for example,
is an awk script.)

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Paul Burchard <[email protected]>
``I'm still learning how to count backwards from infinity...''
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