Re: A few notes on text

Chris Marrin ([email protected])
Tue, 6 Jun 1995 11:18:20 -0700

> >If this is the case couldn't we pick a single encoding to support in
> >VRML and get rid of the encoding field?
>
> Not really, and the main reasons are:
>
> 1) Lack of tools
> 2) Emotional attachment to established encodings
> 3) No single encoding is optimal for everything
>
> What does it mean to encode JISX 0208 using UTF8? This is perfectly
> possible, but the tools for data creation do not exist, and even if
> they did, most people would not appreciate the fact that the could not
> look at a VRML file in their PC editor, and understand what was
> contained in the text nodes.

My concern is the explosion of supported encodings required by all
browsers. What are we talking about a few encodings (2 or 3) or many (10
or 12). If we can limit it to UTF, JISX208 and whatever you'd call a
simple 8 bit encoding, then I think it's implementable.

Can we define the set supported (at least for VRML 1.1)?

What if we instead tag the beginning of the file with the encoding? We
already tag it for "ascii". We could replace this with "UTF8", "JISX208",
etc. This would make it easier for use in editors that produce a specific
encoding. Not only would it be easy to enter text strings in the native
encoding, but node labels and comments could be in it as well.

Of course the first line of the file would have to be in ascii (up to the
first <CR>).

-- 
chris marrin      Silicon      http://www.sgi.com/Products/WebFORCE/WebSpace
(415) 390-5367    Graphics     http://reality.sgi.com/employees/cmarrin/
[email protected]   Inc.         
         "As a general rule, don't solve puzzles that open portals to Hell."