I agree.
Folks, if VRML is meant to be portable, then VRML browsers *must*
properly handle ^z. Religious mutterings about old DOS don't count.
There are all kinds of editors around that still put ^z at the end of
a file. If the purpose of VRML is to clean up the world of text
editors, than by all means make browsers choke on ^z. If there is
another purpose (such as bringing real-time 3D distributed virtual world
navigation to the Web), then make browsers gracefully handle ^z.
This is really not so much a spec issue as a portability issue.
Logically (though not physically) a DOS text file with a ^z should be
considered to have as contents everything up to (but not including)
the ^z.
I'll get laughed off the net for admitting this, but here goes.
Despite years of attempting withdrawal, I have been unable to wean
myself from the use of an old version of Wordstar as my programming
text editor. I know those control codes like they were hard-wired
into my brain, and since it dates back to the days of 256K of ram
and 12 mhz computers, the program is lean and mean and loads and
works like greased lightning on my current machine. The whole darn
program probably sits in my CPU cache! I've never found another
editor that handles columns as well. Believe it or not, my Fractint
coauthor Bert Tyler admitted to me in a moment of weakness that *he*
used Wordstar too! (Hopefully by now Bert has moved on to a modern
editor like Windows's notepad. <g!>)
Wordstar doesn't just leave a control z at the bottom of a file, it
blasts dozens of them there! Hey, I'm not proud of this, but I've
probably left all kinds of source files various places with garbage
at the end.
I'm not saying VRML should handle ^z because a few crazy people like
me against all reason use (gasp!) Wordstar, but I
can say that nearly all software I've used can handle those ^z
characters gracefully. If Webspace can't, it's an embarrassment to
the programmers (or will be if they didn't fix it after the issue is
pointed out to them, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for
missing this at first.)
Meanwhile, I'll try to "just say no" to Wordstar and ^z! I won't use
it today, I promise! Really!
Tim