One step along this road is to add a few common materials to
VRML 1.1 say a MetalA, MetalB, MetalC, WoodA, WoodB, PlasticA,
PlasticB... these could be specified with a few default Material
nodes in the spec... This would simplify world construction,
but It would not make the .wrl files much smaller, so I'm not sure it
would be worth the effort... I am sure though that the default materials
shouldn't have names like copper, gold, iron, etc... rather it would
be good to say MetalA is like iron, MetalB is like copper, etc...
This way we don't have to mess with this type of steel doesn't look
like this type of steel, so which should we use?... we can just say
here are a few differant materials that look pretty differant from
each other, and look like the materials found in objects people
would commonly want to put in their .wrl files... These materials
are here to make your life easier, and if you don't quite like the
shade of our yellow metallic material, you can go and define your own...
ith this we could maybee use a Scale node or maybee a scale field
in my previously proposed NewSite node or something like it...
scale .1 .1 .2
If the default scale is in meters, this would multiply the x
dimension of all subsequent objects by .1 Y by .1 and Z by .2...
In this way I could use the same named node to define a small cup
a medium, a large, and a big gulp... it also would allow me the
ability to change the aspect ratio of the object to turn my cup into
a bowl...
I'm just brainstormin here, trying to think of tools that would
make creating .wrls flexible, easy, and efficient. Please don't
think any of these little suggestions of mine are each a little
crusade... I'm just throwing my ideas out for discussion...
I thought I'd say that now, because I've just sent several messages..
And I apologize for taking up too much bandwidth...
-Nathan