Re: Newsgroup

Kevin Perry ([email protected])
Tue, 18 Apr 1995 15:06:04 EDT


Oh my! naming things is always so difficult! Here's my
current very humble opinion.

I agree with the venerable Brian Behlendorf <[email protected]>, who wrote:

-- On Apr 18, 9:49am, [email protected] wrote:

>I'll say it one last time - VRML is a language, not an "infosystem".
>"Gopher" is an infosystem, "WWW" is an infosystem, HTML is not, VRML is
>not. They are network-aware languages. If an HTML newsgroup were to be
>created it would probably be comp.text.html or comp.doc.html. When
>people talk about Inventor, or DXF, or any other 3-d language, they go to
>comp.graphics.
>
>Anyways, it's up to the majority.
>
> Brian
>
-- End of included message --

VRML is a language, even it's name says so; a group strictly for
discussing VRML ought to go in comp.lang.vrml (certainly not
comp.graphics, though! Graphics is a subset of what VRML expects to
deal with).

On the other hand, I can see the usefulness of a newsgroup devoted more
to the discussion of (potential) "VR-based Infosystems", with the natural
jumping-off point being systems that use browsers that support VRML.
So maybe there's hope for a comp.infosystems.vr-based?

I should also mention that I caught flak from some comp.graphics folks
last year when I tried (unsuccessfully) to start a comp.graphics.inventor
newsgroup, rather than comp.lang.inventor! The voice of experience
suggests it's worthwhile to post a query to the potentially affected
groups, i.e. comp.{infosystems,lang,graphics,whatever}, soliciting
opinions. Not everybody who has an interest in this question is
subscribed to this list.

Just a few thoughts from left field...
kp

-- 

---
Kevin Perry                        Interactive Computer Graphics Lab
<[email protected]>              CIT/IMS - Princeton University
                "Ceci n'est pas une .sig"