Re: PHIL: User Customization (Was: Looking for Linux based VRML tools)
Sam Hunting ([email protected])
Sat, 8 Apr 1995 20:38:52 +0059 (EDT)
> VRML represents 3D scenes as trees or DAGs that have structure. This is
> a big win over a markup language that simply annotates some existing
> structure. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing other types of documents
> written in a VRML-like syntax, such as:
>
> #VRML V2.0 ASCII
> TextDocument {
> Title {
> title "My Logical Document"
> }
> Preface {
> body "Welcome to my logical document...
> ...
> "
> }
> Introduction {
> }
> Chapter {
> chapnum 1
> body "Hello there..."
> }
> Chapter {
> chapnum 2
> body "Hi there again..."
> }
> }
Such a syntax could (should?) be developed using SGML (Standard
Generalized Markup Language), defined in ISO 8879. Such syntaxes
can indeed "decouple the (user-defined) view (rendering) of an object from
its underlying logical (author-defined) > structure." Some consider it a
weakness of HTML (which is written in SGML) that it does not perform such
"decoupling."
Fortunately, browsers that understand *any* SGML language -- not just
HTML, or HTML polluted with proprietary NetScape tags -- are coming onto
the market. This is a big win for users who wish to own their own data.