Re: Why does DEF do instancing? (fwd)

Ok, let me put it this way:

This isn't supposed to be a flame, or at least, only a mild one.
(Flametheower laden with water?)

Having an instantiating DEF in a language, is just simply bad syntactical
design. Period. End discussion.

You can wave any number of internal esasons for doing it in my face, but I
won't accept them. Why?

Because the whole problem is exactly that: VRML, which used to be Open
Inventor, is just a convenient way to store the internal data structures in
Open Inventor to file. Or rather, the OpenGL-based internal Open Inventor
structures.

And since VRML is a inbreed-cousin with Open Inventor, all the "flaws" of
this fact has carried over. OF COURSE the Open Inventor format works great -
for Open Inventor. But is it really good for general VR?!

For anybody trying to implement something which is NOT on top of OpenGL sees
all the little things pretty clearly.

For anybody who sits down and READS a VRML file, is immediately struck by
silly things, such as instantiating DEF's.

Why did this "flaw" exist in the Open Inventor?
1. It reflected the internal datastructure
2. People use Authoring tools instsad of writing files directly, and dont
SEE it.

BUT, and here is the big BUT:

WHEN you did all the "changes" to Open Inventor to turn them into VRML, WHY
weren't these things fixed!?

I mean, I don't care if DEF instantiates in Open Inventor, or the esasons
for it. IT shouldn't have done that in VRML!!

Again, Its just plain syntactical sense, and any "internal esasons" you may
give are nullified. They may be "internal" to Open Inventor, but we MUST
learn that VRML *ISNT* Open Inventor. Take a stsp back, forget the Open
Inventor ever existed, and look at the format in it's own right!

We want DEFONLY!

All 4 now.

/Z

--
Hakan "Zap" Andersson | http://www.lysator.liu.se/~zap | Q: 0x2b | ~0x2B
Job:  GCS Scandinavia | Fax:   +46 16 96014            | A: 42
zap@lysator.liu.se    | Voice: +46 16 96460            | "Whirled Peas"
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 Heard on sci.virtual-worlds some years ago:
   "We probably shouldn't go immediately go for the direct neural
    interface, just because it is 'the techy thing to do'"
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