Re: [openvrml-develop] request for comments : a perl module for openvrml

[Braden M. <br...@en...>]

On Wed, 2001-09-26 at 16:10, clayton cottingham wrote:
> heya:
> 
> with the new messages
> about progress updates ive 
> had a hint of inspiration
> and i want to try something new with perl
> 
> if all goes well it should be beneficial for all
> 
> 
> i noticed matt s of axkit fame made those nifty perl modules
> for wrapping around the libxml c libs XML::LibXML
> 
> when braden mentioned:
>    Once these changes are in place, fully generic traversals of the
> scene
>    graph will be possible.
> 
> i got excited and thought maybe i should try my hand at hooking up
> some perl modules to the c libs of openvrml

OpenVRML does not presently provide a C interface; just C++. It is
possible to write a C wrapper around the C++ interface, but it doesn't
make a lot of sense to pursue that until our API has solidified more.

Even then, providing a C interface is quite a bit of work for something
I'm not sure would be widely used. There are two reasons to have a C
interface:
        * to use the library from C applications.
        * to use the library from applications written in scripting
          languages that know how to talk to C libraries.

It's my feeling that there aren't too many folks using C who want to use
OpenVRML. I think most of our users and prospective users using this
kind of a programming language are using C++.

As to the second point, I do think it would be very nice to be able to
use OpenVRML from scripting languages. However, I think most scripting
language users will expect a relatively high-level interface, like the
EAI. And that is exactly what I would ultimately like to provide. I
still think it is a sound plan to use CORBA for this interface. We just
need more infrastructure in place before active work on this becomes
practical.

> mostly for using to parse and validate vrml
> 
> a heady task im sure
> &
> im really not sure what i need to know

OpenVRML already parses and validates its input. What kind of
application are you envisioning?

-- 
Braden McDaniel                           e-mail: <br...@en...>
<http://endoframe.com>                    Jabber: <br...@ja...>