SIGGRAPH, August 5, 1996
During SIGGRAPH '96, NIST hosted a meeting of VRML developers and content providers. At this meeting, we presented NIST's mission, why we were interested in VRML, and a proposed framework for VRML 2.0 Conformance Testing (Postscript version of Mary Brady's slides). The purpose of the meeting was to determine whether the VRML community was interested in NIST's participation, and if so, to what extent we could utilize resources from the community in developing test suites for VRML metafiles, browsers, and authoring tools.
The meeting was well attended by many active supporters of VRML 2.0. The response from this community was overwhelming. They were very much interested in NIST taking a leadership role in conformance testing, and have very specific and immediate concerns. In general, the community is willing to contribute past testing resources, including a public domain parser, a couple of translator tools, and some VRML 1.0 metafiles. They would like to see NIST take these tools, and build upon them to provide the community with a full set of testing resources.
There are three major areas of work: file syntax, browsers, and authoring tools. Below are approaches and the response from those at the meeting.
Metafile Syntax: Provide a mechanism for determining whether a metafile is syntactically correct, including the following constraints:
NIST approach:
Response:
VRML Browsers: Provide a mechanism for determining whether VRML Browsers behave properly:
NIST Approach: Build a set of conformant metafiles. Display these files on both the browser in question and a reference browser; visually compare the results.
Response:
VRML Authoring Tools: Tools must generate conformant worlds.
NIST Approach: This area is very difficult to test, due to the fact that there are no minimum requirements for VRML Authoring Tools.
Response: Don't worry about authoring tools - spend your efforts in metafile syntax and browser testing. At a minimum, the syntax checker can provide a basic test for these developers.
Name | Company | |
---|---|---|
Lynne Rosenthal | NIST | lsr@nist.gov |
Mark Skall | NIST | skall@nist.gov |
Mary Brady | NIST | mbrady@nist.gov |
Jim Doubek | Chaco Communications | jimd@chaco.com |
Glenn Crocker | Chaco Communications | glenn@chaco.com |
Mark Pesce | VAG | mpesce@vag.vrml.org |
Gavin Bell | WAZABI/VAG | gavin@acm.org |
James Waldrop | Construct | sulam@construct.net |
Don Brutzman | NPS | brutzman@nps.navy.mil |
Erik Johnson | Axial Systems, Inc | erik@axial.com |
Bob Lipman | NIST | lipman@nist.gov |
Chris Marrin | SGI | cmarrin@sgi.com |
Rikk Carey | WAZABI | rikk@best.com |
Andrey Wydler | SGI | andres@engr.sgi.com |
Val Watson | NASA Ames | watson@nas.nasa.gov |
Ron Levine | Consultant | levine@dorianresearch.com |
Sandy Ressler | NIST | sressler@nist.gov |
Bill Horn | IBM | horwwp@watson.ibm.com |
Gabriel Taubin | IBM | taubin@watson.ibm.com |
Dick Puk | INTELLIGRAPHICS, Inc | puk@megatek.com |
Steve Carson | GSC Associates | carson@siggraph.org |
Michael P. | Netscape | MICHAELP@NETSCAPE.com |
Jan Hardenbergh | Netscape | JCH@NETSCAPE.com |
Gray Schlichting | BAMTA | gray@bamta.org |
Andrew Hess | Axial | andy@axial.com |
Harry Vittelli | Axial | harry@axial.com |
Mike Pell | Axial | pell@axial.com |
Martin Hess | Axial | marty@axial.com |
Scott Fraize | Dimension X | SCOTT@DNX.COM |
Pam Arya | GRCI | parya@grci.com |
Rachel Duff | GRCI | rduff@grci.com |
Mitra | PANDORA | MITRA@EARTH.PATH.NET |