Re: 3D -- WebGL and SVG?

Hi David,

On 07/08/2011, at 6:23 AM, David Dailey wrote:

> So, maybe, as you say, the domain of SVG is limited to making sure it can be used with 3D technology, but it is possible that the similarities, and markup *could* share a lot more in common. SVG has done a lot of things very very well. It is conceivable that slight extensions to the conceptual space outlined by SVG + SMIL + replicate could motivate just the sort of declarative language that the incubator group seems to be seeking. After all, most of the mathematics of higher dimensional space is written in notation that appears in 2D <humor />.

I think this is where I am most reluctant - maybe I misunderstand your suggestion. I don't think there are slight extensions to SVG that would provide a useful 3d format. Even if there are, I think that effort would distract from work necessary in SVG.

There definitely is a community for declarative 3d markup. As I said in my first message, the problem is developing something that is useful outside a niche, and making sure the right people are involved. 

> On a tangential note, irrelevant to the basic discussion, if by the one truly successful markup language you mean HTML, I think its success was less due to its careful crafting than to the remarkable void that existed pulling *any* suitable declarative language into that hungry space at the time.  

Accepting that seems to imply that there is no space hungry for 3d markup at the moment. Collada and X3D are available but not (yet?) popular on the Web.

By exposing WebGL, which is extremely low level but also somewhat limitless, we now have the luxury of waiting to see what libraries people build upon it. Maybe then it will be more obvious what areas 3d markup could be useful.

Dean