I'm pretty agnostic on the issue -- the real question, as far as I'm
concerned, is results. Some folks have asserted that binary-plus-zip
gets significantly smaller files than ASCII-plus-zip; some have said
that it doesn't. Can we have a few careful tests? There have been
various numbers bandied about (eg, Timothy's test), but none have
actually addressed this question, which is the key one. Comparing
the straight proposed binary format against gzipped ASCII, or
gzipped Inventor binary (a rather different format) against gzipped
ASCII VRML, just aren't relevant.
I'd say that, at minimum, a binary format should save 10% in order
to be worthwhile. (I'd prefer to see 25%, but every little bit
counts, and 90K *does* take perceptibly less time that 100K, IMO,
so it's arguably worthwhile.) We need to see whether this actually
happens.
Over on the theory side -- Mark pointed out that Gavin's .iv model,
with an enormously high percentage of points, may not be the same
structure as VRML in the long run. I'll also point out that while
Gavin's model argues that tokenization isn't so important, it *also*
argues that Mark's fixed-point binary may well be *very*
important. Even with restricted precision, an ASCII integer is going
to take a lot more bytes than a 2-byte binary one. I'd be interested
in seeing how they compare after zipping; I'd expect the ASCII to
compress more, but possibly not enough to compensate for the enormous
initial savings from the binary format.
The main point, though, is: numbers, numbers, numbers. Until several
different tests are run, using some kind of mockup of the binary
format plus zipping and compared with the ASCII plus zipping, with
models of different structures (including Mark's structure-rich one
and Gavin's point cloud), we simply don't have enough information
to make an intelligent decision. It's not especially difficult to
create this mockup; I have to believe that a good programmer could
do it with the QvLib in a couple of hours. No, I'm not volunteering;
I simply don't have either the time or the passion right now. But it's
the right way to make this argument a good deal more convincing...
-- Justin
Random Quote du Jour:
"Q: Is there a UNIX FORTRAN optomizer?
A: Yeah, `rm *.f'"
-- Christopher Welty