[WF-Protocols] Binary format

[Dirk Reiners]

	Hi folks,

I think all this talk about binary XML misses the point of a binary
format for 3D data: ASCII to binary conversion.

Standard XML files usually have a large number of small elements. for
them the parsing of the markup might be a problem, even though there are
some results on the web saying that a good general parser is often than
a badly written specific one.

But for 3D data the bulk of the data will be things like vertex
coordinates, normals, texture coordinates, textures themselves etc. The
main advantage that we found for our binary files is not having to
convert those values from ASCII to a binary format. This speeds up
parsing dramatically, and that's what makes a binary format worthwhile.
Binary XML won't help you here, you need a format that has more semantic
information about it's contents than XML.

Thus I'd suggest doing an XML version first and an IFF version once
that's done.

My .02$

	Dirk

P.S.: Intro: I'm the technical lead for the OpenSG Open Source
Scenegraph (www.opensg.org). I've just been lurking because I care more
about scenes than models (well, we usually don't make the distinction,
but when in Rome... ;).
-- 
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-- Dirk Reiners               OpenSG Forum               dirk at opensg.org 
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