[ODE] GUI Editor, to XML or not?

[Allan Simonsen]

I might be wrong here, but the two concepts aren't
mutually exclusive.

1. Define an XML/Schema format for ODE that accuractly
represents a physics world
2. Create Save/Load functions for ODE that enables the
application to save from- /load to- the current world

Since the world-format is nicely defined and
documented as XML, there's nothing stopping you from
writing your own importer for you high-level OOP
framework.

At the same time, this might give us the very usefull
debugging/tweaking feature of being able to dump the
current scene, load it into the physics editor,
visualize and tweak a few parameters, and reload the
scene back in your game/simulation. 

Allan

--- William Denniss <lists at omegadelta.net> wrote:
> 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
> -------------------------
> > HomeEmail: <sjbaker1 at airmail.net>    WorkEmail:
> <sjbaker at link.com>
> > HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
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=====
Allan Simonsen                    simonsen at rocketmail.com
ICQ# 16606984

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