[ODE] GUI Editor, to XML or not?

[William Denniss]

While I am sure this would be a useful thing to have, not everyone is
using the raw C ODE calls, and it is less practical for these people.

For example, if you are using some higher level O-O library with ODE,
then it's pretty useless if your editor exports just the C calls.

I would rather see either loaders in the code to read the XML or an
XML<-->Code (C/C++ whatever) converter, although I feel ultimately a
loader is the better path to take.

I have seen this done with OpenGL in the past, that is having a modeller
export C code with the openGL calls.  Once you do something like that
you are hopelessly tied to the API making it not future proof at all. 
Using some standard format is much more flexible in the long run.

Will.

On Fri, 2004-02-27 at 10:10, Steve Baker wrote:
> It seems to me that rather than have each of these editors hassle
> about how to read and write "ODE-format" physics files, the smart
> thing would be to build a file load/save command into ODE itself.
> 
> If you could load or save the current structure of the ODE model
> to disk with a single command, then this would be a no-brainer
> to implement for everyone who is writing one of these tools.
> 
> Even if each tool has it's own quirky file format, they'd all be
> able to share files easily.
> 
> What's more, other ODE applications would be able to load files
> from those tools conveniently.
> 
> Heck - you could even take your existing ODE application and add
> the one-liner to write out the physics structure and import that
> into one of the editors.
> 
> This would also ensure that the file format didn't get out of step
> with ODE itself (eg if ODE were ever released with new joint types).
> 
> ---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
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