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Tim Bray wrote: > ... > >> The VRML guys did the smart thing. They formed >> a consortium to work on the technology and >> liased with ISO to get the documentation process >> right. It works stunningly well > > > I'm glad to hear that VRML is working stunningly well, that word > hadn't reached my neck of the woods. > ... You might not realize it, but VRML lives on, with Java-enablement and extensions, in MPEG4 in the higher level profiles. I wondered where it 'went' for a while and then read all of the MPEG4 standards, and implemented the file format and scene description, while working for an MPEG4 video encoding company a couple years ago. VRML is the basis for the generalized scene description language which is encoded as a hand-packed bit encoded (a la Huffman) specific-schema. As long as you never extend it, that's somewhat ok, although you end up with a lot of specific parser code corresponding to everything. That's not to say that anyone has really tried yet to create a complete MPEG4 player. MPEG4 is truly the kitchen sink of "standards", er specfications. I like it and am horrified by it at the same time. That it includes VRML, Java, and a file format based on Quicktime is very interesting I thought. sdw -- swilliams@h... http://www.hpti.com Per: sdw@l... http://sdw.st Stephen D. Williams 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax 20147-4622 AIM: sdw
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