Re: an Add/Delete protocol for Inventor

Linas Vepstas (linas@innerdoor.austin.ibm.com)
Tue, 25 Oct 1994 14:48:12 -0500


Hi Gavin, good to hear from you.

> From: "Gavin Bell" <gavin@krypton.engr.sgi.com>
> Date: Tue, 25 Oct 1994 10:08:38 -0700
> Subject: Re: VRML MUD's & Interaction
>
> Re: an Add/Delete protocol for Inventor
>
> The Inventor library has an undocumentedFrom
> /usr/include/Inventor/misc/SoTranscribe.h:
>
> | This file contains definitions of the SoTranSender and SoTranReceiver
> | classes used for transcribing Inventor data. Transcribing is the
> | process of packaging changes to a database and sending them over a
> | "wire" to another database.
>
> Transcription is a very little-know feature of the Inventor library,
> (documentation other than the .h file would help), but I think it
> proves you wrong that keeping a server/client in sync with scene
> deltas is hard if you use Inventor.

OK, I'll buy that. The next question then is:

o What is the protocol sent & received?, or, at least, what would it
look like if it were human-readable ASCII?

o What is the bare minumum of the protocol needed to do MUD?

I have a bunch of questions in my own mind as to details & how-to's of
this protocol; but maybe I should keep these to myself. Would you
be willing to spec out/ explain an ASCII version of this protocol
that would be suitable for VRML?

--linas