[ODE] XML ODE Data Interchange Format (revision 5)

[William Denniss]

On Mon, 2004-03-15 at 02:43, Steve Baker wrote:
> There is a trade-off here between complexity in the file writer and
> complexity in the file reader.
> 
> I'm strongly of the opinion that the complexity should be pushed as
> far as possible into the writer - because there will be more readers
> written than writers - and because readers tend to be more time-critical
> than writers because they are used in level readers in games and such.
> 
> So, where possible, DO NOT provide a lot of convenient looking options
> in the file format...these can possibly help the writer by making it
> do less conversions and data shuffling - but it can't possibly help
> the reader who has to be able to correctly parse a dozen different
> variations on each command and do data shuffling and conversions
> for all possible variations.

Good points - perhaps this sort of thing is best kept to a conversion
utility.

And as for the point of supporting extra values in the vertices - we are
breaking one of the goals of the standard as it's no longer domain
specific to ODE.

Of course - for specific needs where you have control over both the
reader and the writer then there should be no hassle using an extension.

Will.

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