I suspect Fiona had no idea what she was kicking off when she kindled this dialogue.  
Anyway, I think the primary strength of J3D is
that it provides a high level scenegraph inside of the Java environment.  It's a great 
playground and a great way to prototype
applications.

I think there are 3 weaknesses that are tops in my mind - J3D is not involved in any 
of them:

In agreement with Martin and Uwe - The primary weakness I feel is that the Java 
distribution policy is not mature yet.  It should be
possible to have modules or extensions automatically distributed.  Clients should have 
a persistent component cache.  An application
could have references to a component, a revision code, and various locations that 
component could be found and if those components
were not already present on the client computer they could be fetched.  This is just 
part of future proofing.  I imagine someday
having a sea of agents running all the time with a throttled amount of CPU and 
diskspace, and bartering or advocating for my
interests.  In such a future my computer will have to be able to allow the virtual 
diplomats or product vendors into the castle as
it were and attempt to plea for audience with my buying or personal attention agents 
or even me directly.  More down to earth, I
love this comment:

>To put it into a nutshell : there are bugs ...so what ?!
>Only a hand full of freaks will ever notice them 'cause nobody is able to run Java3d
>without investing one hour in downloading and installing software.

The secondary weakness is the binding to native code.  Although this is not really 
feasible I wish that a java application could
directly refer to arbitrary binary libraries.  The JNI methodology forces developers 
to write yet more code in a language other than
Java.  Having more native code means the developers have to consider security and 
deployment issues which make it ever more
difficult to build web enabled applications.  Of course the JNI exists for another 
reason, which is to allow native code to drive
Java and there isn't any other way of exporting state from Java to native methods 
without some kind of native layer.  But on this
theme it would be nice to be able to have the dlls inside the jar file.

Finally I think that the security model is too strong.  I don't think it is 
unreasonable to have the expectation that a web product
shipped by a reputable vendor will be free of malice.  Every day I download and run 
binary plugins based on a level of trust backed
up by legal protections.  Granted I simply don't understand the full ramifications of 
the Java security model, and it could be that
there are ways to sign and publish applets which allow the user to agree to allow the 
applet to violate security permissions.

Actually I do have a fourth observation, which is that I'd like to see more free 
software like Java3D in the Java community.  I
believe that infrastructure software needs to be free in order to succeed.  Some 
people have done great work, such as the J3D
hierarchy browser and the NCSA work, but when I look at sites like Gamelan 
statistically I just don't see the same kind of caliber
of developer as compared to say Freshmeat.  Instead I see people trying to sell java 
clocks or other trivial applications.  Why is
it that Sun has to provide Java3D?  Why couldn't it have been done by the community as 
a whole and what does it say about us?  I'm
as guilty as the rest, and probably we're all simply too busy, but it seems like we 
almost need government intervention to do
infrastructure work in high tech these days.

 - Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: Uwe Trostheide <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wednesday, November 10, 1999 7:09 PM
Subject: Re: [JAVA3D] [Java3D Request for information


>Hello All,
>
>here are my 2 pennies to this discussion :
>
>I agree in most points with Martin. Java3d is powerful, easy to use
>...and the the very moment totally useless from a commercial side of
>view.
>
>It will be *essential* for the success of Java3d that it will be
>supported by any browser *without* downloading different files
>installing them and copying 4 jar-files and 2 dll's to the right
>location (have i missed something ?)
>
>On the other hand there is no real choice but using java3d for
>internet-based programmes. Well, ok,  there is VRML and you can do a
>lot of things with that, too... but then you got horrible clients and
>you are some what limited in your possibilities.
>
>I don't think it will be a problem for stand-alone-application. There
>you can write a installing-program or something like that and sell it
>altogether on a cd.
>
>To put it into a nutshell : there are bugs ...so what ?!
>Only a hand full of freaks will ever notice them 'cause nobody is able to run Java3d
>without investing one hour in downloading and installing software.
>
>IMHO the engineers at sun should spend some time to solve this
>problem. Fast.
>
>
>
>Best regards,
> Uwe                            mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Hello ,
>
>===========================================================================
>To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body
>of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST".  For general help, send email to
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help".

===========================================================================
To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body
of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST".  For general help, send email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help".

Reply via email to