[WF-Protocols] Design Goals

Aglanor aglanor at telefonica.net
Thu Jul 3 20:07:25 PDT 2003


Ok, I've re-written the goals taking into accounts the comments since
yesterday:

Design Goals:

	* A format for interchange of model data. The main criteria of decision
should be interchangeability, above others such as efficiency.

	* Must be free and open. Must be independent from platform and SDK.
	
	* Must be scalable: new features added to the standard should not break
backwards compatibility. Applications should ignore features they don't
understand.

	* Should be easy to implement, read and write.

	* Oriented to rendering engines and model tools. Specifically, it is
not intended for complex editors.

*****************************

	If everyone more or less agree with the former goals, there is only one
point left to decide: extensibility. Should we allow third parties to
add extensions to the format? 

	<IMHO>I think extensibility is a needed thing, not everyone will be
happy with what we provide so this could give the means to add the
needed extra functionality. Most standards out there are not "locked",
but allow extensions, as long as they are marked as such, and that the
data is usable without the extensions.</IMHO>

*****************************

	Seems the goals are almost sorted out, once we've discussed this last
point I'll freeze these Design Goals and add them to a "Specification"
page, where I'll be adding every item in which we reach consensus here.

	Regards,

	Aglanor







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