As an appendix to the VRML/1.0 spec, we should revise the original idea
of a ``Virtual Reality Markup Language'', as was proposed at
the 1st WWW Conference. Despite VRML/1.0 doesn't look anymore much like
something marked up, it fits into the SGML content model. We could this
make clear by either
- devise a SGML DTD which is isomorphic to VRML/1.0 or
- figure out what the SGML delimiter set and the SGML DTD of the concrete
VRML/1.0 spec is (where I'm not sure whether the ``Group { ... }''
syntax of VRML is expressable in SGML).
That would VRML make fit into the world of SGML documents,
enabling authors to include VRML into HTML, HTML into VRML, and so on,
supposed future WWW browser will be built as SGML applications. Also
this would be an effort to close the gap between the original idea of
structured information representation in the WWW and the raising need
or wish for sophisticated rendering, which latter often leads to the
(in principle, unnecessary) sacrifice of the former.
Sam:
would you like to start formulating a DTD isomorphic to the
VRML spec? That would be a good start.
mesch.
> > 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"
> > }
...
> > }
>
> 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.
--Steffen Meschkat [email protected]