[ODE] XML ODE Data Interchange Format (version 4)

[William Denniss]

On Tue, 2004-03-09 at 15:43, Limor Schweitzer wrote:
> William,
> Excelent work again!
> 
> minor comments:
> 
> 1) I'm not sure what TinyXML (http://www.grinninglizard.com/tinyxml/), which 
> i use,  would do with the multiple [0,0,0,0] matrix lines.

No, the parser which would use TinyXML would have to interpret that text
itself under that scheme which is I guess less than ideal.  From your
point of view, how would you recommend we store the matrices in XML?

> 2) could you please add some geom-specific params in the examples (for 
> example, add radius and length to cylinders [does current ODE support 
> cylinder collision with all other geoms ?!] )

Ok, I'll add some more to the example.  There is another example under
section "2.1.2 <geom>".

I'm not sure if the current ODE does - but I'll put it in the spec
anyway.

> 3) Not sure if this was implicit in the text or not but one should be able 
> to place joints and joint-groups under relative transforms (for example 
> under a body, inheriting the body's transform)

Yes this can be done.  I'll make it more clear but "joint" is classified
as an ODE Object - and "body" a collection (actually this node is
both).  Collections can hold ODE objects and the transforms are
relative.

> 4) whats with the copyright notice ? do i need explicit permission to use 
> this format, quote all or part of the RFC, use the term XODE  etc. ?

No, you don't need explicit permission at all to use it.  Most RFC's
have copyright notices - I guess this is to stop certain large companies
(who I will not name) from embracing and extending standards.  An
example is this RFC: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2616.html (the HTTP
protocol)

I guess I need to add something like they did at the bottom:

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> I think this format should work ok for my needs (ezphysics), infact it is 
> not that different from what i've exported so far.
> Are you working on a reference implementation ?

That's great to hear.

I considered using yours as a reference implementation and I did take a
good look at it a few weeks ago (when we were debating the merits of
XML) but in the end I didn't.  Hardly surprising they are similar I
guess since it's the same underlying library they are representing.  I
must say though that when I saw your editor and its XML - it showed me
that XML is indeed a very good format for storing ODE scenes and all we
really need is a standard format so all these great editors are
compatible with each other.  Based on your knowledge from creating
ezphysics - can you see anything important that I have mistakenly left
out of this spec?

Thanks,

Will.

-- 
William Denniss - will@ http://tanksoftware.com/