Re: Content, net-distribution aspects of VRML/Inventor/HTML/WWW

Paul Burchard (burchard@horizon.math.utah.edu)
Mon, 26 Sep 94 21:08:24 -0600

Brygg Ullmer <ullmer@uiuc.edu> writes:
> I'd suggest using "WWWInline" in place of "WWWFile," and
> "WWWAGroup" in place of "WWWButton" (the WWWAGroup name
> could use some work, but it's a step in the right
> direction, I think). WWWAGroup is an almost exact
> equivalent of HTML's ubiquitous Anchor type. As such,
> WWWAGroup has no representation itself, but rather adds
> a hotlink property to the elements expressed within its
> scope. On the other hand, WWWInline is very similar to
> Mosaic and its descendant's inline graphics
> functionality, except probably with a few added twists

> linked to the spatialized aspects of VRML.

This is indeed how I interpreted them. Moreover, these two functions
are almost exactly the same extensions that we added to OOGL to get
WebOOGL (with "<" denoting inlines, and ">" denoting anchor groups).
So I think there's a good deal of consensus on the functions, if not
the names.

I must admit I do like your names better (I think Gavin was just
trying to stay close to names of related items in Inventor).

And yes, handling the inlines efficiently could eventually require
some fairly sophisticated "level-of-detailing", for example based on
visibility as well as scale.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Burchard <burchard@math.utah.edu>
``I'm still learning how to count backwards from infinity...''
--------------------------------------------------------------------