[x3d-public] [x3d] SFString/MFString Proposal [was: Agenda forX3D WG Open Meeting ...]

yottzumm at gmail.com yottzumm at gmail.com
Wed May 10 02:21:01 PDT 2017


I say we add whole numbers to MFStrings and call them MFPaths for even more confusion.

John

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Yves Piguet
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2017 5:18 AM
To: Leonard Daly
Cc: x3d-public at web3d.org; x3d WG
Subject: Re: [x3d-public] [x3d] SFString/MFString Proposal [was: Agenda forX3D WG Open Meeting ...]

> On 10 May 2017, at 06:43, Leonard Daly <Leonard.Daly at realism.com> wrote:
> 
> Q: What problem are you trying to fix? 
> A: There were three reasons provided in the original proposal. I will also add that this topic has generated numerous discussions on the public and WG lists since it was first introduced in V3.0. The rate of threads is (if memory is correct) about once per year. After 15+ years of X3D V3, this rate of discussion (and the extensive discussion in each occurrence) tells me that the documentation is not sufficient. After 4 versions of the standard, that tells me that it may not be possible to write sufficiently clear documentation and that the better solution would be to change the representation.

I can't agree here. The documentation is problematic now and could be made formally correct if one states clearly what belongs to the XML standard and is kept outside the scope of X3D-XML, and what's the value stored in attributes.

Whether the result will be easy to understand for a novice is another question. Multilayer formats are bound to be complex; that's in itself a good reason to keep it as is and avoid loading it with exceptions and backward compatibility considerations. Storing structured data in an XML string is debatable, but certainly not specific to X3D. Coordinates in SVG, for instance, are also stored in long strings to avoid an explosion of tags.

Personally I don't see any decisive argument to change the encoding. It's only the standard wording which calls some adjustments.

Yves


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