How is XML restricting you? It doesn't care how you use the tree. There are things that look silly to an XMLer that may have a legitimate application. Bits like
<parent name=''> <children></children></parent> look like someone didn't understand structure given by XML, but they aren't illegal and there can be reasons to do that. Things like name="'name'" look worse but I am told there are reasons to do that too. XML doesn't care. OTOH, I generally agree with Peter that scattering information across a file has costs. Some aren't obvious for small files and RAM rich machines, but as the file sizes increase, the lack of regular and compact structures will start to cause inefficiency system-wide or so the theory goes. In terms of all of the exceptions you have to write in XSLT templates, this is usually true. In VRML, one is told one can put ROUTEs anywhere because they aren't part of the scene graph. OTOH, ParallelGraphics wants them near the nodes they connect. Habitually, we put them all together at the bottom of the file because of habits acquired early in the VRML era. Now implementations confuse us and practice doesn't serve us. So IME, it is better to have tighter structures earlier and ask if they are keeping you from doing something, or simply making you be disciplined. len From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Reed Hedges I don't see why the XOD format should prevent stuff like that-- which are important abilities we have in VOS. If we have <link> why not <parent> (or the parent attribute)? <parent> would just be the inverse of <link>. XML is too restrictive here. XOD is already very specific to VOS in its element names; if you want to reuse a XOD along with some other XML you're going to be applying a trasformation to it anyway, and I'm pretty sure XSLT and XPATH are powerful enough to gather objects declared in different places in the file that have parent child relationships. _______________________________________________ vos-d mailing list vos-d@interreality.org http://www.interreality.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vos-d
