Re: PHIL: Why no text in VRML???

Chris Marrin ([email protected])
Fri, 24 Feb 1995 14:21:26 -0800

On Feb 24, 9:58am, Randy Stiles wrote:
> Subject: Re: PHIL: Why no text in VRML???
> Hi Everyone,
>
> The presence of text, either as wireframe letters or 3D objects, is
> very important. For situations where it is necessary to specialize
> your scenes, or to specialize objects which have the same geometry but
> different uses/meanings it is necessary to have text labels at the
> very least. It lends your environment a degree of flexibility so that
> you don't have to build models for every case possible, and in these
> varying cases, participants can still understand it.

Another important need for text is in controlling complexity. You can put text
in a VRML scene by using a tool to generate polygons from a text string and
including that as a model. But that way you can't control complexity of the
text except by generating a bunch of versions of varying complexity and then
using an LOD node. With a text node the viewing app can generate as simple a
representation as necessary.

-- 
chris marrin                     ,,.                        
Silicon Graphics, Inc.        ,`` 1$`
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