> I'd be very interested in hearing any comments that people have; please
post
> those comments to the list(s) for everyone to see, since my main goal is
to
> stimulate discussion.
>
> The URL is <http://sunee.uwaterloo.ca/~broehl/vrml/simple_prop.html>.
Ok, I have a comment. I was meaning to write something VERY similar myself,
but Real Work got the better part of me.
Bernie, you suggest that we "by convention" put properties first, and you
also suggest that no naming needs to be done, because there is only one node
you could ever talk about (one transformation, one material, e.t.c.).
I dont think this will make people very happy, because by doing this you
essentially rule-out using the primitive shapes easily in an object. I.e.
stuff like:
SomeTransform
A cube
SomeOtherTransform
another cube
someothertransform
another color
a sphere
..would be impossible!
Sure, you can wrap each cube in a separator, but that is ugly, and a lot of
work for the handwriting VRML dudes and dudettes.
My suggestion is: KEEP your ideas intact, BUT, remove the requirements of
having only ONE transform in each separator.
HOWEVER, require that there is A transform first, before the first geometry
. [Or, if there is none, an implied identity transform].
It is this FIRST TRANSFORM (or material, or whatnot) that is
modified/modifiable by behavior. All following transforms, colors, e.t.c.
are considered "integral parts of the object" and can be "flattened out"
when the model is loaded from file. (They can't be changed by behaviors)!
This keeps the simplicity of your proposal intact (and the API simplicity)
but keeps the "power" of current VRML.
So in the little cube/cube/sphere sample above, the whole collection would
be movable by behavior, but their respective distances would NOT. (Unless
you wrapped one of them in another separator, of course!).
IMHO, the "Separator Is Object" route is better than adding a special node
for it...
> --
> Bernie Roehl
> University of Waterloo Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering
> Mail: [email protected] Voice: (519) 888-4567 x 2607 [work]
> URL: http://sunee.uwaterloo.ca/~broehl
-- Hakan "Zap" Andersson |http://www.lysator.liu.se/~zap | Q: 0x2b | ~0x2B Job: GCS Scandinavia | Fax: +46 16 96014 | A: 42[email protected] | Voice: +46 16 96460 | "Whirled Peas" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The moon is better than the sun, beacuse the moon shines when it's dark. - Me ------------------------------------------------------------------------