Re: Re[2]: WWWlogical idea

Anthony Parisi ([email protected])
Tue, 13 Dec 1994 18:46:20 -0800 (PST)


>
> McQ asks:
> >My question: Would it be appropriate to specify a suite of "standard local
> >objects" within the specification? Then the browser would be responsible for
> >providing anything that appears on the list of standard local objects -- SLOs :)
>
> I'd be inclined not to. For one thing, I *strongly* doubt that the folks
> doing the spec'ing are going to accurately guess what the popular objects
> are -- one beauty of the Web is the organic way in which things can get
> popular, quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Also, we want to allow for
> very simple, low-weight browsers. So unless these objects were *extremely*
> basic (in which case, they'd probably be pretty dull), I don't see the
> point. The number of objects that a browser wants locally could easily
> vary by several orders of magnitude from system to system...
>

Good point.

> On the other hand, if we wound up implementing this idea, I would
> *definitely* want to create a browser that can read from CD-ROM, with
> an eye towards eventually issuing a disk chock-full of useful toys...
>

My idea exactly.

But it sounds like we'll need a "name registry" to handle the
identification, i.e. naming of standard objects such as "utah-teapot" and
"bay-window" (apologies to architects/interior designers reading the
list). In this way a VRML scene can be published which instances such
objects and allows the browser to optimize bandwidth, or provide a
personalized view of an object (a *key* feature, according to some human
factors folk) by using locally defined rendering descriptions. Naturally,
such scenes should also define fallback URLS in case the named object
can't be found locally.

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tony parisi
[email protected] "In cyberspace, no one can hear you type"
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