[ODE] New ODE GUI Editor available : ezphysics.org

[Shaul Kedem]

Hi,

 First, cungratz on the XML flame war, I think it's
one of the firsts...

 Second, I have a feeling the answer here is very
simple, while creating an XML format create an "XML to
bin"/"bin to native language and platform format"
converter. Now translate all your ODE XMLs (ODEXs?)
into bin format before entering production and simply
use the "bin to native language format" to load it
into the system. This way you will save the space and
time of using XML as well as earn the ease of use and
all of the other benefits XML provides.

 As a side note, someone said "regexp is a fast way to
parse XML", I don't know why he said that but it's not
true, loading the file (or a part of the file) into
memory, tokinizing it and going through the tokens is
a faster way, for one, and has good tools to support
it (bison, for example).

 Just my 2c,

Shaul

--- William Denniss <lists at omegadelta.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 14:04, Billy Zelsnack wrote:
> > If you're going to lead a file format attempt, I
> can picture three
> > major
> > religous issues. 1. binary or text which is
> already showing its head.
> > 2. if
> > text, then xml or not. 3. scope.
> > 
> > My personal opinion is that it should be xml and
> have no tags besides
> > what
> > is in the ODE api. It should be the ODE format,
> not a general
> > physics/simulation format. The naming conventions
> should reflect this.
> > Anything fancy like behaviors or anything else are
> some other format.
> > 
> > btw. I don't really like xml, but it does provide
> a known starting
> > point.
> 
> I'm certainly not one of those "everything should be
> xml" people but I
> really think that in this case it makes a lot of
> sense.  The tree
> structure, objects, and attributes all play nicely
> with xml.  There is
> also many efficient XML tools already created in
> many different
> languages for us to use.
> 
> I am all for a pure ODE format - anything else would
> just be too broad
> and be less useful.
> 
> > Some xml issues are how to define the objects.
> With custom tags or with
> > types. (sorry, i don't know the proper xml
> terminology)
> > 
> > <hinge id="left_elbow" jointGroupId="blah">
> >     <anchor value="0 0 0"/>
> >     <axis value="0 1 0"/>
> > </hinge>
> > 
> > vs
> > 
> > <object type="hinge" id="left_elbow"
> jointGroupId="blah" >
> >     <attribute name="anchor" value="0 0 0"/>
> >     <attribute name="axis" value="0 1 0"/>
> > </object>
> > 
> > or maybe a hybrid.
> 
> Either works I guess, but considering there are
> pretty few different
> objects in ODE anyway, the former is probably better
> as it is easier to
> read (when one has to load it up in a text file).
> 
> > On a side xml note. I like to think of xml
> elements like a constructor
> > with
> > a body. In the examples above would be like this
> in pseudo c++.
> > 
> > someHinge=new hinge(jointGroupId="blah");
> > someHinge.anchor="0 0 0";
> > someHinge.axis="0 1 0";
> >
> > All elements in the constructor exist at the time
> of creation where all
> > elements in the body are only added as they are
> parsed. This shows its
> > usefulness once you start having child objects.
> The constructor gives a
> > parent object enough information to create itself.
> As each child object
> > is
> > then parsed and created, it is added to the
> parent.
> 
> and this is one of XML's strengths for this type of
> problem, the
> parent/child relationships are maintained without
> much effort at all.
> 
> It would be very good if all these new editors could
> at least import and
> export to a common format (regardless of their
> various internal
> formats).  The exporting part at least would be
> fairly straight forward
> - just iterate recursively though the object tree
> printing out tags and
> data :)
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Will.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ODE mailing list
> ODE at q12.org
> http://q12.org/mailman/listinfo/ode

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail.
http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools