Re: experts

[Justin Couch <justin@vlc.com.au>]

"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" wrote:
> 
> VRML97 sat there fat dumb and happy for
> five years.
> 
> Some people get it right the first time. ;-)

Well, that wasn't us. As one who did a lot of the patch work to get the
VRML spec through ISO and also the newly added EAI spec (VRML97 Part2) I
can assure you it was not gotten right the first time. Very, very far
from it (have a look at how many different implementations of the event
model and script handling are out there. Even within the one vendor they
had multiple different and incompatible event model impls).
 
> This next pass is the real bear.  We decided
> to use XML.  Boy was that ever a hit to the
> head.   It seems XML comes with a HUGE family
> of siblings and they eat the effort out of
> house and home trying to keep up.

Say that again. The real problem for us is the DOM/XML combo and people
not understanding that "XML" is not the data model that defines the
spec.  We've run into a few snags where there is no such concept as
marking an attribute "read-only" from the DOM perspective. Of course, we
run into the the opposite problem in VRML land where all the experts did
things one way and then the non-experts came along and changed
everything because they didn't understand the reasons for the decision
in the first place and so pissed all the experts off. The only ones left
defining the standards are the "users" who don't have a clue about
implementing realtime graphics systems and the result is a currently
impossible to implement specification (guess who's job it is trying to
implement it ATM...)

Chaulk one up to the closed spec definition group because they know
better than us screwing things up brigade...

> "The problem is not crossing the road,"
> said the Chicken, "it's the traffic."

No, it's Kelloggs for putting drivers licenses in the cereal packets
(spoken from a motorcyclist's perspective who's had too many run-ins
with such idiots)

-- 
Justin Couch                         http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/
Freelance Java Consultant                  http://www.yumetech.com/
Author, Java 3D FAQ Maintainer                  http://www.j3d.org/
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"Humanism is dead. Animals think, feel; so do machines now.
Neither man nor woman is the measure of all things. Every organism
processes data according to its domain, its environment; you, with
all your brains, would be useless in a mouse's universe..."
                                              - Greg Bear, Slant
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