>But an external stylesheet is a better solution for such
>requirements. A stylesheet should not be included in VRML, but
>pointed to by it.
...
>The HTML group was looking at DSSSL-Lite last time I checked.
..
>If text is not a "vital" part of VRML, a simple extensible approach
>should suffice until more complex requirements are defined.
>The defaults should be set clearly and should be the "best
>case". That all browsers cannot support all fonts is not
>a difficult issue as long as the common defaults are supported.
>This issue has already been resolved in word processor
>applications. The results are sometimes *surprising* but
>never *showstoppers*.
Len makes some very goods point here. First, the separation of
formatting is a key idea, and quite applicable to graphics objects
defined in VRML.
Another important point is this: when I designed the nodes I recently
sent out to the list, I spent a long time thinking about how text
would be used within VRML. I could find no compelling reason for
providing VRML the ability to display large amounts of textual data,
but rather leave that to SGML viewers and such (ie. objects embedded
within the world defined by VRML). However, I could see that
representing certain things, like text in signs, would be better done
in VRML itself. As such, I aimed for a set of *minimally* functional
objects, that:
1) Allowed support for multilingual text, and multiple character
sets and encodings.
2) Allowed basic formatting of the text nodes to be specified (and
ignoring large-document needs).
3) Be flexible enough to support future developments.
So the current nodes are just minimally functional primitives, but I
think they'll suffice for 95% of the *native* text requirements, and
as Len also says, there should be few surprises when using these
nodes, given a reasonable (and easily implementable) infrastructure.
As for DSSSL-Lite: it is getting better and better, and I know of at
least 1 vendor that will be supporting it in a WWW-capable
browser. Currently W30 et al. are experimenting with other formats.