Re: Why does DEF do instancing

Chris Laurel (chris@dimensionx.com)
Fri, 13 Oct 1995 15:48:14 -0700

James Waldrop writes:
>
> Chris Laurel wrote:
> >I think that this is a bit annoying also . . . generally, when I DEF
> >things I stick them inside a Switch with whichChild set to -1 so that
> >the DEF'd node gets parsed, but not instanced. Which leads me to ask
> >the question: this is legal, portable VRML right?
>
> Right now it is. It's not clear to me if it will always be. There
> has been some discussion about VRML 1.x not letting state leak out of
> Switch{} nodes. I haven't gotten a clear response as to whether or
> not that change will besak this kind of code.

If it's legal now, I think that it will remain legal. While Switch is being
changed so that it inherits from Separator and cannot leak state, name
definitions are not state. There is only one, global scope for names
in VRML . . . to the best of my knowledge, it will remain that way in
2.0. Comments on this from someone in the aechitecture group?

--Chris
chris@dimensionx.com
http://www.dimensionx.com/chris/

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