Actually, I hope the scorching didn't come from me, since that is
something that could benefit from this language if designed well.
> >From what I understand, the purpose of VRML is to present a scene,
> which once obtained may be interacted with but that is a browser
> issue. Objects may perhaps be given behaviors, but this should not be
> necessary, and I thought the survey results indicated that this should
> be thought of, but not implemented for V1. There is not a concept of a
> "VRML server", and such things as the moving a chess piece and other
> users seeing the results is not a VRML issue.
More aptly, it's not something VRML has to address by itself.
Use the HTML analogy. I've seen a prototype MUD client built into a modified
version of Mosaic that sits *on*top*of* the world wide web using a separate
protocol and server than WWW documents do - it allows people to inhabit
particular pages in WWW space as if it was mud space. The most
interesting thing, though, was that people could send messages to each
other in HTML - so my words could become a hyperlink somewhere, or even
have an inlined image in them. Now, imagine something similar for VRML -
the statements coming down the pipe are just declaritive VRML files, with
variables that scripts (either server or client side) could modify on the
fly, thus animating the scene. The script doesn't have to be built into
VRML at all for this.
Brian