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Re: [www-vrml] Tim BL Is Baffled, Too
Hi Tony,
I'm trying to cut down on my posting here, but you make a few points I should reply to.
Tony Parisi wrote:
I have to say that the consortium has opened up its doors somewhat more
recently. I'm glad, and hope it continues to open up further.
Recently? It's been wide open to anybody with $100US for four or five years
now.
That is what I mean about closed doors. Who has US$100 to spare? I certainly don't. I live way below the poverty line. And if I have little money imagine how the average student manages.
There is a temptation these days to consider people who don't have money to be not worth considering, but that is a short-sighted view. If VRML/X3D is not to go (more) stale it needs constant infusion of new blood. Barriers to that work against it. And nobody knows where the next round of brilliant ideas will come from to revolutionise 3d. I may be money-poor, but I am information-rich and this is the case with increasing numbers of people now.
Second, there is a fallacy here about process. To think that hundreds of
users, authors and students you cite can *design a system* together is quite
naïve. It just doesn't work that way. The broader group can be deeply
involved in defining requirements and reviewing designs all throughout the
process, but the actual design can only be done by a *very small* group. In
a perfect world, that's 1-5 people. With working groups and open process, it
tends to be double that size. But beyond size, that the process simply
becomes unmanageable.
While I disagree slightly on actual numbers (I tend to side with Alan there), nevertheless I do agree completely with what you say. The problem is in finding the people to populate the group. If you have a small group that becomes tired and burned out they will need to be replaced or supported by others until they have regenerated enough to get back into it. If your group can only draw from a small number of people then, through no fault of theirs, progress will slow and go stale. If, however, they have thousands of people to draw upon there will always be new people to step up to the plate and the dynamic won't be lost.
In any venture you will only ever have a small number of "movers", the others will mostly lurk. But the lurkers are far from unimportant. They are users and authors and occasionally new "movers". These things tend to self-select and rarely need explicit pruning.
(My opinion here) If anything, Web3D has had too many cooks and that has
resulted in some weird crap in X3D. If it was back in the day when we had a
VAG-- 8 of us, still 3 too many IMO-- X3D would have been done two years
sooner.
It will always be the case that many of us feel that any current version hasn't got it right. There has always been weird crap every version including VRML 1.0... I mean: SpinGroup{}??? and yet is was a brilliant idea because it was the only animation in that version I think (it has been a long time since I wrote any VRML 1.0).
We will never know if an earlier X3D would have been better than a later one, or whether opening the process completely would have speeded it or slowed it. Complex systems quite often turn up counterintuitive results. For instance, who would have thought, 10 years ago, that open-source systems would provide better security than closed ones? Who would have thought that the not-for-profit sector would turn out to be the 8th biggest economy in the world? On the surface of it it doesn't appear to make sense, yet it is so.
But yes, the larger community should be involved throughout that
process in several ways. And with open source widely available the broad
community can help with implementations and tools in a way that wasn't
possible back in the early VRML days.
That is part of my point about opening up the consortium.
I agree with your other points. But all I can say is that I think your focus
is misplaced and your energy would be better spent building solutions upon
what we have already done. It's not perfect but it's darn good (as good as
*any* proprietary solution out there) and at this point there shouldn't be
anything holding you back.
Yes. :)
I am growing annoyed at myself spending so much time posting when I should be working.
I will continue to work on VRML, and in all likelihood X3D. And I'll probably continue to bemoan various aspects of both, as well as being critical of the consortium or the community if they don't work the way *I* think they should. :)
I'll also be working on other 3d solutions outside of VRML/X3D because I feel strongly that big mistakes have been made that probably can't (or won't) be put right.
But for now I should shut up and get some bloody work done.
Except those darn authoring tools. Why can't anybody get those right? Well,
hang on for another six months. The tool situation will improve
dramatically. You'll see.
Best wishes to you for that.
- Miriam
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