--- "Miller, Raul D" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It might be interesting to program a VRML layer on top > If I had the option of trying to talk to VRML from inside J, I'd > be happy to try it. I am not suggesting to use a VRML layer. I try to say that in the design of VRML seasoned 3D professionals already solved those problems and their _ideas_ can be used. > sounds significantly less useful for the geometry editor I > proposed as a more elaborate example of what I was looking for. [quoting my previous message] > > Things, which can help make a successful editor > > are gluing and alignment guides, local coordinate vectors > > and mesh to give the sense of relativity, position and direction. > > You use one hand to activate keyboard modifiers > > and the other to move the regular mouse within > > corresponding constrained subspace in a predictable way. > That said, my impression from the few examples of VRML I've seen > is that VRML is a relatively simplistic physics simulator, with > a fairly flat rendering model. I believe this topic is about user input interaction as opposed to model representation or rendering. What do you mean by 'flat'? > Also, the cases I've seen use xml as the medium of communication. > So I expect J would need good xml support on which it would need > to base it's VRML support. XML is a more recent external input format. There is also VRML format. But VRML engine can be interfaced with API calls. > But I think that what I'm asking for is much simpler. It could > be broken down into two more general operations: > > (1) The ability to supply a small image to use as the mouse > cursor (for cross platform portability this would either have > to be a bit map or there would have to be some way of discovering > the limitations of the platform). Alternatively, it might be > adequate to have a set of (abstractly defined) cursors one of > which is picked by numeric index. I've seen systems use both > mechanisms, I don't care which is documented as long as I can > make the thing transparent. I thought you were talking about a 3D cursor, which is not an image, but a 3D object, a manipulator, which can, for example grab things. If that's a plain bitmap, than how is it different from a regular screen cursor? > ever is under the mouse at the time. So it could be generally > useful if J would let me say: when the cursor is over this > graphical element, the cursor looks like (specified value). And > maybe assign a priority to that to allow the user to implement > different concepts (does the button take priority over the form, J and even OpenGL layer wouldn't be able to link cursor shape with position over an object, it's application's job. OpenGL may only help make a hit test. BTW, in VRML there is just such feature, called Anchor: if you hover over an anchor-enclosed geometry, cursor changes, just like over a hyperlink on a web page. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
