[x3d-public] remove SF/MFInt32 ?

[Don Brutzman]

Appreciate the thoughtful inquiry, thanks colleagues.  A few more points:

a. Hardware. X3D is designed to run across an exceptionally wide range of devices in a performant way.  The original scene graph was designed when every single triangle counted, and we have been diligent about maintaining graphics-performance rigor throughout its evolution, so X3D is efficient.  Many computing hardware platforms are quite necessarily strict about the handling of integers/floats/doubles based on memory, processing performance, and power consumption.

b. Software.  X3D is designed to run across an exceptionally wide range of programming and processing environments.  Thus if a JavaScript implementation wants to treat all numbers equivalently, or defer typecasting until data gets transferred to hardware, or whatever, that is OK and doesn't impede other implementations.  The X3D abstract specification describes functionality of rendering and interaction, not reference software implementations.

c. Data or code.  X3D is designed to be workable both as a file encoding or as a programming-language binding with functional equivalence.  The X3D Unified Object Model work is capitalizing on that... more to follow once we get through HAnim updates, venture into C++/C#/Python programming, etc. etc.

d. Disclaimer: I think that typing is incredibly valuable because it reveals errors.  Many such errors are otherwise undetectable, so typing is an important aspect of model Quality Assurance (QA).

e. Portability of reusable models.  So feel free to pursue X3D generation, presentation and interaction using the best implementation approach you want... YMMV.  Also know that portability of X3D scenes across all of these other platforms/formats/languages/methodologies can (and typically will) work equivalently when deploying valid X3D model content.

Have fun with X3D!  8)

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