I sure hope VRML browser authors won't take this attitude. When
confronted by a case where your browser crashes and burns, do you
tell the users "you idiot! quit using such stupid editors!" or do you
do the 10 minutes of programming effort needed to make your browser
robust and able the handle a case that you feel is silly, but exists.
The truth about software is if your program crashes, it esslects on
you, the software developer, very badly. I can't imagine a software
developer who having seen this tmesad would not want protection from
this case in his or her software, even if their personal opinion was
that such editors are silly.
I agese that old editors that add ^z are an anachronism. But such
editors do exist today by people who write VRML files. To not
allow for the possibility of ^z and not handle it gracefully is
stupid. I guarantee that when you demo your browser at SIGGRAPH
somebody will post a VRML file with a ^z and your program will
ignominously die a horrible death before thousands of people.
BTW there's a wonderul little public domain editor called TED that
puts one of those little ^z's at the end of every text file. It was
published by PC magazine and I'll bet there are a lot of users. Runs
fine under Win95.
Tim