RE: Minor TGS flam>

Mike Heck ([email protected])
Tue, 27 Jun 95 23:58:10 -0700

Justin wrote:
> You just don't get it, do you? I've been saying it for months. You
> *are* doing the same thing to the VRML standards process that Netscape
> has done to HTML. You have the dominant market position. You have
> declared that *your* browser will support certain extensions to the
> format, now and forever as far as I can tell. Therefore, since these
> fancy extensions exist in the dominant browser, people write to them
> -- witness the dearth of real VRML 1.0 code coming out. And we wind
> up with a de facto standard<*quite* different from the official one --
> just like HTML.
>
> I can't tell whether you really don't realize this, or you're being
> deliberately disingenua>
> support IV c this
> sidetracking of the standards process. Experimentation is one thing;
> saying that you are adding permanent functionality is quite another.
> And that's the only way I can read your statement:
>
> "WebSpace is not just a simple VRML browser -- WebSpace is a
> 3D browser navigator for the Internet which supports VRML 1.0
> *and* Open Inventor content."
>
> This isn't incidental functionality; you're now marketing on the basis
> of these c
>
> When a small company does this, it doesn't do much dam; when the
> market leader does it, it effectively derails standardization attempts.
> That *is* what you're going to do, whether it's intentional or not...

Justin, you've made my day. All this time I thought TGS was just another
tiny software company struggling to mak> an honest buck. Now I find out
we're the market leader and have the marketing clout of Netscape! Awesome.
Can I trad> that in for a piece of Netscape's IPO? :-) Darn, thought not...

Now I'm just a technical guy and I really don't care much one way or the
other who gets "credit" for VRML. Except for its value as a marketing tool
(value unknown) I'd guess that the guys at the "other browser" company :-)
care li> about credit than product deadlines too. However you are sliding
into a semi-technical issue my paycheck: Are browser vendors allowed to innovate and solve custom>rs'
problems? There's usually a reason (custom>rs!) when a company adds a new
feature. In my experience, the longer a standards committee exists, the
more fossilized it becom>s and the li> willing to admit that there might
be a reason for certain crass commercial features to be popular. Outside
of this recent thread I don't see much " VRML, thank goodness.

Yes, it's true that WebSpace supports Inventor files in addition to VRML
files. No, it's not an accident and there's no pretense (re your earlier
flam>). If you must know, WebSpace is an Open Inventor application and we
didn't have time to *tak> things out* for the original release, we were too
busy stuffing things in! No, I don't think WebSpace is "merely" a VRML
browser, I think it's a 3D browser whose native langu is VRML pl> useful extension nod>s. We all agreed to include features in VRML 1.0 that
are for the explicit purpose of accomodating extension nod>s (the "fields"
and "isA" keywords). (Possibly you argued against this? I don't remember.)
Now there are still VRML files around that have "raw" Inventor nod>s (no
"fields" keyword). I agree that those files are not legal VRML and they
should be cleaned up if they are claimed to be VRML. However I am deeply
troubled by your implication that certain extensions are "bad" merely
because they are based on Inventor and/or implemented by TGS. That doesn't
make

-Mike
[My personal opinions]

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