[x3d-public] X3Dv4 page edits, status update

[Brutzman, Donald (Don) (CIV)]

Today Dick and I are trying to edit the following pages without success, due to permissions problems.  Trouble report submitted.

Here are changes we've agreed on, TODO apply them once website edit permissions are restored.

This review will be part of this Friday's teleconference as well.  Discussion welcome.

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1. X3Dv4 Strategy
    https://www.web3d.org/x3d4

a. For consistency among multiple related url addresses, request swapping page url with "x3dv4"

	https://www.web3d.org/x3dv4

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2. X3Dv4 Implementations
    https://www.web3d.org/x3dv4-implementations

First sections look good.

Table: X3Dv4 Draft Specification Implementation Status

a. Annotation

- change from "Work in Progress etc." to

	"Deferred to X3Dv4.1"

Rationale.  After careful review, the group has decided to defer work on this component.  Significant further design is warranted, possibly by a Web3D User Experience (Web3dUX) Working Group in cooperation with Design Printing Scanning and Medical Working Groups.

b. Event model alignment.  Don is working on that and will ask Andreas for review, since he is working on both X3DOM and X_ITE.

c. Field name changes. Initial review indicated that backwards compatibility with prior field names.

d. glTF and Lighting model: Michalis working on draft, Don to help with initial review and then bring back to group.

e. HAnim v2.  Same status, need to work on examples.

f. Inline.  Some years back there was a suggestion for a 'refresh' field for Inline:

	SFTime [in, out] refresh 0 [0,+infinity)

https://www.web3d.org/member-only/mantis/view.php?id=1262

Suggested prose and additional info from mantis issue:
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It can be very useful for authors to automatically refresh content.  Suggested field addition for nodes like Inline, ImageTexture etc.

	SFTime [in, out] refresh 0 [0,+infinity)

Suggested prose: "The /refresh/ field defines the interval in seconds that are necessary before an automatic reload of the current /url/ asset is performed.  If original loading fails or the /load/ field is FALSE, no refresh is performed.  If performed, a refresh attempts to reload the currently loaded entry of the url list.  If a refresh fails to reload the currently loaded url entry, the browser retries the other entries in the /url/ list."

An example use case is reloading weather content.  Interestingly this can also lead to inversion of url order, a model might first try a url for a remote weather service before falling back on local data for a sunny day.

The /refresh/ field does not apply to X3DUrlObject because it is not appropriate for some nodes (for example, Anchor is only activated by a user and not automatically).

Of note is that an author can build similar functionality with TimeSensor, LoadSensor, Script and ROUTEs but such an event chain is fairly involved.  Having a /refresh/ field will allow authors to easily create more dynamic Web content.

Security precaution needs to be noted.
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Thanks to Nicholas Polys for again raising this possible improvement.

g. Metadata field defaults.  Another meeting discussion needed.

h. PointProperties.  DPS working on implementations, examples, screenshots.

i. PTM.  Followup work needed.

j. Volume: Nicholas please advise on response to comments by Dick and I, just before Web3D conference.

k. Layout. Remove deprecation! Identify key examples, encourage additional implementation, and consider/describe relationships with HTML5.  Once convincingly described, we will figure out how to say this properly in the spec.

l. TODO: add the implementation status spreadsheet to the references below.

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Request: what did we miss, if anything? All review appreciated.

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