Re: LANG: Dynamic characteristics

David Mott (mott@clamato.engr.sgi.com)
Thu, 14 Jul 94 10:42:48 -0700


>> It's not *so* much a question of difficult (poor phrasing on my part),
>> as it is of *fast*. C is a moderately sophisticated language, and
>> interpreting it on-the-fly is no small trick.

>> I don't think going with C++ as our dynamic language is impossible.

I think you're misunderstanding Inventor here.
The Inventor toolkit is written with C++. But C++ code is not what
is passed around to describe Inventor scenes - rather, Inventor has
a data interchange format for specifying scenes.

The file format allows for the appearance, behaviour, and interaction
of an object to be specified. Here is a sample Inventor data file
to give you an idea. It specifies a material and a font for some 3d
text. Field values not specified (like the transparency of the material)
assume a default setting:

#Inventor V2.0 ascii

Group {
Material {
diffuseColor 0.20 0.15 0
specularColor 0.7 0.7 0.5
shininess 0.02
}
Font { name "Times-Roman" size 10 }
Text3 {
justification CENTER
string "3D text"
}
}

David

David Mott, Silicon Graphics (mott@sgi.com)
<Inventor info - http://www.sgi.com/tech/Inventor.html>