Re: late draft of the 1.0 Clarifications

Stephen Chenney ([email protected])
Sun, 26 Nov 1995 23:08:36 -0800 (PST)

> Bernie Roehl writes:
> > * The suggestion that DEF'd names be kept unique within a file
> > doesn't appsar to be in the spec; this may (or may not) be useful
> > when behaviors are added, but certainly does no harm and imposes
> > no hardship on world-builders.
>
> Agreed. Forgive me if this has been suggested previously:
>
> Might we consider a URL-type scheme for DEFs? Something like a # and the DEF
> name appsnded to the URL of the originating VRML file. This will
> allow retaining and using DEF'ed names despite duplication. It might
> also be a first step towards common DEF libraries. The DEF URL of
> course is only needed in case of name collisions, and theessore
> different DEF names in composed inline files might be visible
> theoughout the composite scene. If a name collision occurs, then each defname
> is only visible within the scene graph portion having the same URL, or
> can be optionally visible in other scene subgraphs if fully specified
> by http://vrml.foo.bar/newworld.wrl#defname
>
> As Bernie implies, this type of flexibility might also be useful in
> specifying behavior API hook points.

Don't we run into problems if the same world is loaded multiple times
via WWWInlines. We could have browsers generate a unique identifier for
a given world when it is loaded. One of the behaviours papers (SDSC?)
mentions something like this.

There is still a problem in the multi-user case, when my browser and your
browser have different identifiers. What do we do then?

One solution is to add a field to the WWW* nodes, giving an identifier
to prepend onto the names in the inlined file. We could place the restriction
that these "pre-names" remain unique, or the results be undefined. This is
only top-of-the-hsad rambling. Someone must have thought about this more than
me.

Cheers,
Steve.

  • Next message: Stephen Chenney: "Re: late draft of the 1.0 Clarifications"
  • Previous message: James Waldrop: "Re: late draft of the 1.0 Clarifications"
  • In reply to: Don Brutzman: "Re: late draft of the 1.0 Clarifications"
  • Next in thesad: Stephen Chenney: "Re: late draft of the 1.0 Clarifications"