[X3D-Public] [FreeWRL-develop] .x3z and minizip; bundling of resources for X3D binary

[Don Brutzman]

Interesting progress on the freewrl developers list by Doug Sanden regarding the bundling of resources for a single .x3d file (such as images, audio, etc.) in a single zipped file.

This type of approach, if a common best practice emerges, might do a lot for deployability and archivability of fully-complete X3D content.  So we need to add it to the X3D Binary Compression effort.

This thread is copied here with permission... Doug please feel free to tell everyone more about how this is working out.  Thanks for your efforts.

On 9/4/2013 7:42 AM, Brutzman, Donald (Don) (CIV) wrote:
> Wondering, what are resources?  Is that a "mac thing" ?
> 
> Of relevance:  there already exists an .x3db binary encoding, and an option to use gzip.
> 
> Of further interest:  we have a call for contributions for compressing X3D further, perhaps you want to contribute further.
> 
> http://www.web3d.org/realtime-3d/working-groups/x3d/compressed-binary-encoding-activity 
> 
> http://www.web3d.org/realtime-3d/news/3d-graphics-compress-call-contributions
> 
> http://www.web3d.org/realtime-3d/working-groups/x3d/compressed-binary/x3d-compressed-binary-encoding-call-contributions
> 
> http://web3d.org/wiki/index.php/X3D_Binary_Compression_Capabilities_and_Plans
> 
> Also:  we put the finishing touches on a mime type update for X3D during last week's working group teleconference and submitted it to IANA.  Feedback also welcome on that.
> 
> http://web3d.org/wiki/index.php/X3D_MIME-Type

p.s. Leonard and I have received and responded to initial IANA response on mime type update during last week's Wednesday teleconference for X3D working group, that is moving right along too.

> Recommendation:  unless this is only a freeWrl-internal capability you are considering, you might want to bring this discussion to the x3d-public list.
> 
> Thanks for your efforts.
>
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: doug sanden [mailto:highaspirations at hotmail.com] 
> Sent: Monday, September 02, 2013 3:09 PM
> To: freewrl-develop at lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: [FreeWRL-develop] .x3z and minizip
> 
> With some mods -not checked in yet- I could load a .x3z file -.zip of a doc.x3d and its resources- with freewrl.
> 
> -Doug
> more..
> .x3z is just .zip. Reason for a different suffix: so it can be registered as a MIMEtype handler and directed to the appropriate application ie. freewrl -similar to how GoogleEarth handles .kmz which is a .zip file with a doc.kml and its resources.
> 
> minizip - zlib source code comes with a /contrib folder and /contrib/minizip is a handful of .c files which can archive/unarchive files from a .zip file format:
> ioapi.c/.h, zip.c/.h, unzip.c/.h (there are others, not needed) It relies on and works well with zlib.
> 
> I needed 170 lines of user code to use the unzip functions. Basically I handle resource type resm_x3z and unzip it all to a temporary folder, and resitem_enqueue(tempfolder/doc.x3d).
> The rest of freewrl works normally.
> 
> touchups needed:
> - doesn't delete the temp folder yet
> - works with local files .x3z, but not yet with http .x3z 	
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all the best, Don
-- 
Don Brutzman  Naval Postgraduate School, Code USW/Br       brutzman at nps.edu
Watkins 270,  MOVES Institute, Monterey CA 93943-5000 USA   +1.831.656.2149
X3D graphics, virtual worlds, navy robotics http://faculty.nps.edu/brutzman