[X3D-Public] authoring environments and browsers: why both?

[Braden McDaniel]

On 5/12/09 4:35 PM, John Carlson wrote:
> Why are there both authoring environments and browers/players?
> Shouldn't a browser be able to support/deliver an authoring application?
> I realize the same dichotomy has existed with HTML as well--but there
> are HTML browsers which support editing, right? Is there something
> missing from VRML/X3D which only authoring environments provide? Would
> providing these within the context of VRML/X3D make a better standard?
>
> I can use vim to write vim, emacs to write emacs, eclipse to write
> eclipse, netbeans to write netbeans. Would the combination of netbeans,
> Xj3D and X3D-Edit be considered the solution of choice? What is the best
> way to author 3D authoring environments? Is it just that we aren't there
> yet?
>
> Relieve my ignorance, please. I'm sure there's some history I have
> forgotten.

Mostly because there's no defined mapping from arbitrary world state to 
a serialized form.

As an example, suppose a Script node has a vrmlstring of the form "PROTO 
Foo [] { Group {} } Foo {}" and it adds this resulting node to the 
scene.  Where, lexically, does the definition of Foo live?

-- 
Braden McDaniel                      e-mail: <braden at endoframe.com>
<http://endoframe.com>               Jabber: <braden at jabber.org>