Re: [openvrml-develop] Considering OpenVRML for my project - Some questions

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

On Mon, 2002-04-08 at 20:41, Reed Hedges wrote:
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> On Monday, April 8, 2002, at 08:14 PM, Braden McDaniel wrote:
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> >
> >> Eventually I want to support Script
> >> nodes (which would affect my object structure).
> >
> > Aha... Now this is a whole 'nuther ball of wax. What kind of Script node
> > support are you looking for? If you mean *complete* Script node support,
> > then you need a whole VRML runtime engine, and OpenVRML definitely fits
> > the bill there.
> 
> Yeah, pretty complete. ROUTEs too.   What is the interface to Routes and 
> Script nodes?  I ran doxygen (by hand, after modifyiing Doxyfile.in -- 
> configure could not find my GL libs and aborted) but only noticed the 
> abstract ScriptObject parent class...

Check out the rearch branch. Tag is OpenVRML-REARCH_BRANCH. The doxygen
docs there are *much* better.

> > JavaScript is adequate, but incomplete. Check the task list. Java is
> > there, but nascent.
> 
> Yeah, JavaScript.
> 
> >> Can I build OpenVRML without any OpenGL rendering features and just use
> >> it's parsing and scripting features?
> >
> > Yes.
> 
> An option to configure?

No, but we need one. It's not hard; I'll do it before our next release.
(After the rearch branch merges back with the HEAD.)

> > It would be interesting to see a bridge between OpenVRML and some other
> > 3D runtime system. Such a project would definitely be helpful in
> > discovering what needs to be exposed in our API.
> 
> I won't have much time for this until the summer, but I'll be working on 
> it heavily then.  The VOS 3D stuff is informed  by VRML, but not really 
> based on it at all... so it will be a bit irritating bridging them :).  
> (It's not a scene graph per se, though the transformations are 
> hierarchical; we only have a few primatives and material 
> characteristics, but will be adding more.  And of course, it's always 
> the little things, right?)

The goal of the rearchitecture is to separate node implementations from
the core. We're not there yet; but the rearchitecture has made the
points of cohesion clear, and they will be eliminated one by one. I
mention this because it sounds like it will have significant
implications for the design of such a bridge.

> Also, I primarily work in Mac OSX.  Any work with OpenVRML on that 
> platform yet?  (One irritating thing is the weird places it puts some 
> libraries, such as OpenGL and GLUT :) It's really easy to "port" stuff 
> from Unix-ish platforms though, so I can do that pretty easily.

It was at least Mostly Working on OS X at some point. OS X is definitely
someplace we want to work well.

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