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Re: [www-vrml] Tim BL Is Baffled, Too

Hi Len,

Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
Will it work everywhere? If Flux is downloaded, it does. 

It doesn't work on my machines. I don't know why. I just get a black window.


If Cortona or Contact are downloaded, they do. 

Neither Cortona nor Contact work on Linux. Only Cortona and CosmoPlayer work on Macs. Only Cortona works on PocketPCs. None work on Palms.

On MSWindows I spend 90% of my time trying to get wrls to work on CosmoPlayer, Contact, and Cortona. I haven't added Flux to that list yet. I am so often tempted to abandon the cross-viewer route and just go for one, but it is something I deeply oppose. While I have great admiration for the folks at Cortona and Contact it has to be said that they have fragmented our community badly. It is great that they advanced VRML while the consortium stayed behind closed doors, but I so wish Contact and Cortona had adopted the same techniques to extend functionality.

Over the last months I have been *finally* making the shift to Linux, where I feel the future lies. FreeWrl and OpenVRML exist there, but I can't say much about them yet as I'm still getting started with them.

So will it work everywhere? Definitely not.
But this is not just a problem with VRML/X3D. It's just particularly acute for us.

As an aside, I was struck by some bedtime reading last night "Advanced Linux 3D Graphics Programming" by Norman Lin, where he tells what alterations are need to run the book's programs on MSWindows. It seems that starting with the right platform simplifies cross-platform work, but programming *for* MSWindows locks the programmer into that environment (DirectX, ActiveX, VB, etc).

Cheers,

	- Miriam

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