[x3d-public] Debugging output from SAI, X3DJSAIL (possibly use Importer/Exporter/Builder to protect secret or proprietary info. Setters, getters are for legacy systems).

[John Carlson]

TL;DR--Mostly noises about debugging  X3D.  Thank you for good 
validation tools and debugging assistance.  I'm thinking several people 
here should open Patreon accounts!  If people will support me, I may 
consider starting a YouTube for X3D (on Linux of course), probably 
modeled around DistroTube. I need to get a good mic, I'm not even sure I 
am understandable :(.  If someone has good software they can recommend 
to rescale HAnim models (no, not just a Transform node), and output the 
result HAnim model to a file, this email is moot. I have been using 
X3DJSAIL, but I'm at a blocker where I can spend a lot of time, or Don 
could probably easily fix it. Primarily, I want to be able to chose from 
3 alternates for HAnimJoint's possible containerFields.  I only see one 
alternate now in the Java code.  Please let me know.

==============================================================================================

Myeong, this is for you:

By UTF-8 output I mean Unicode.   I use UTF-8 as an internationalized 
ASCII, which UTF-8 includes.  What I am particular looking for is XML, 
JSON, and VRML output in UTF-8 format from SAI. We can Browser.print 
from most X3D browsers? Can we output a scenegraph?

JSON is UTF-8, last I heard.  I think UTF-16 and UTF-32 are deprecated.

XML has a utf-8 header.

VRML has a UTF-8 header too.

====================================================================================================

I've heard that one X3D browser was not intended to dump the scene-graph 
to text format.  I guess programmers were expected to have good 
debugging tools?  How do I possibly debug in an X3D browser which is 
stripped of symbols (that is, a browser not built in Debug mode)?   Pay 
an exorbitant fee and sign contracts to get debugging libraries? Pay for 
support to pore over an XML file your boss doesn't want to give the X3D 
vendor access to?  I guess it's up to cryptic console output and 
excellent validation tools which are totally separate from proprietary 
browsers themselves?  Send events to a printing Script?  Are we 
intending to use X3D libraries in embedded systems?  Maybe we should 
have a library with and a library without UTF-8 output?   At one point, 
I was suggesting style sheets be left out of main X3DJSAIL library? I 
think debugging is what Importer/Exporter/Builder patterns are used for, 
which I've been recommending lately?

I think we should improve the debugging features of X3D (web is good for 
now) browsers (particularly SAI), and programmers will love us.  
Otherwise, we are in the trash heap, waste of time. Open source Unreal 
Engine and Unity (?) win, hands down.  X3D and VRML become even more 
irrelevant.

Vendors can have control of what they export, such as proprietary and 
secret information (hence OO encapsulation).   See Builder/Exporter 
here: https://www.holub.com/goodies/holub_design_patterns.pdf . All the 
more reason to devise capability-based operating systems and languages. 
HINT, HINT, previously mentioned at least twice. Capability-based 
systems are intended to improve security.  Where is the session 
information in X3DJSAIL and x3d.py?

As far as using gcc,...

What's the difference in output between the following in g++ Release 
versus Debug mode?

=============

int i = 0;

i = i + 1;

std::cout << i << std::endl;

==============

int i = 0;

i++;

std::cout << i << std::endl;

=============

I ran across this one day in the gdb debugger.  Very interesting.  When 
I submitted the bug, they said they couldn't solve the Halting Problem. 
??? Try it at home!

I am not exactly an free software advocate, I think people should get 
paid for their work.   Even Richard Stallman gets paid.  Open source is 
not about payment.  It's perfectly fine to charge for support, even 
among free software advocates.  To me, open source is about sharing 
defect information and patches with others. You can't share patches if 
you don't have the source code in the first place.

Do people still think that the web is a good thing?   Client 
authentication didn't win. Capabilities didn't win.  The USPS rejected 
being a certificate authority. Now you know why you have passwords all 
over the place, or you have to log into a site with a different site's 
information on you (ew!).  Full web-steamroller ahead!  I'm coughing on 
the exhaust! Maybe the WWW caused global warming?  Anyone want to start 
a conspiracy theory?

I wonder if it would be possible to grab the Scene node and send it to 
my own ECMAScript which printed the Scene?

John

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