Firstly to emphasise what several people have said, caching and
common-objects are orthogonal, independant concepts. Clever clients will
cache objects they see frequently.
Hints are a usefull for anything like VRML where performance and various
other constraints make compromises usefull. I'd like to see it as a general
purpose extension to VRML although I can't immediately see anywhere else
its needed (I'm sure others can). In the specific case of caching, there
are cases where the server knows more about the world than the client does
- for example that the chair is going to get used in other .wrl files
connected to this one.
There are many different cache algorithms e.g. seen frequently,
least-recently-viewed etc, hints help the browser tune its cache optimally
but are definately not required, so I'll drop the idea since it seems too
contentious. Its unfortunate that I cant just add this as an extension,
because the VRML syntax doesnt allow unknown fields as extensions in nodes
(or does it?).
- Mitra
=======================================================================
Mitra [email protected]
Worlds Inc (415)281-1308
<http://earth.path.net/mitra> fax (415)284-9483