>Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 12:21:31 PDT
>From: James Waldrop <[email protected]>
>Sender: [email protected]
>Precedence: bulk
>I think perhaps the people who are arguing for c.i.www.vrml vs c.i.vrml
>are having a culture clash.
>Some people, Mark being one of them I believe, see the World Wide Web
>to be more than HTML. They see it as incorporating *all* networked
>protocols -- a conceptual superset, as it were.
Hello, I've been a lurker so far, but feel it worthwhile to put in my
2 cents worth. I haven't been involved with the nut and bolts of VRML,
but have I been very involved with the growths of the "web" and it's
application at NASA.
The cultural clash that James mentions is really a clash of conceptualization
(and semantics) and therefore, it is important that it be resolved.
Let me elaborate.
IMHO the "web" is not so much HTML, URL, or any of its parts, but more like
an abstraction within which different entities intercommunicate. Whether
it be Gopher sites, WWW sites, News servers, etc., they are essentially
a part of a conceptualized information space I call the web. The mechanical
underpinning that allows this intercommunication to be at all possible is a
magical construct called an URL (contrary to pervious posts, the URL *is*
the big deal).
VRML, or I should say the "space" VRML will give birth (call it worlds if you
like), also will owe its existence to the URL, and therefore VRML "worlds"
have their lineage from the Web. Just as the Web is seen as a superset of
Gopher "space" and other spaces, I fully expect that VRML "worlds" will
become a superset of the web.
Is VRML then a language for describing a 3-D space? Yes. However, it will
give rise to worlds that are a more than the sum of a modeling language, the
URL, or any of its components. I think Mark has the promise of what VRML
will do when naming the newsgroup and I suspect the choice will become
easier after we clarify the semantics a bit.
Anyway, now you have my humble 2 cents worth.
Syed
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World Wide Web Systems Development
National Space Science Data Center Tel:(301)286-4136
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Fax:(301)286-1771
Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA E-mail:[email protected]
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http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/omniweb/ow.html
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