Re: [Gnu3dkit-dev] Strings and parameter lists

[Brent Gulanowski]

On Sunday, February 9, 2003, at 03:51  PM, Philippe C.D. Robert wrote:

> Hi,
>
> working on the renderer API I encounter some problem/issues with 
> strinsgs. In RenderMan everything is handled via C strings (tokens), 
> back in the NEXTSTEP days this would have been used directly 'as is'. 
> Now since OpenStep the use of NSString is recommended and C strings 
> are more or less banned from the API although this imposes some 
> overhead. My problem now is how to map the RenderMan C interface to a 
> proper G3DRenderer Objective-C interface: should we use plain C 
> strings or NSStrings?
>
> Moreover RenderMan uses parameter lists in many places which could be 
> handled either via variable argument lists or NSDictionary objects. 
> I'd prefer to use the latter (from an OO perspective), but I'd like to 
> hear your opinion on that as well before I go on here.
>
> So the main question here is probably whether we want to design a pure 
> Objective-C API or mix it with a C interface. Again, I'd choose the 
> Objective-C approach, but...
>
> What do you think?

I am most happy to choose the Objective-C approach as well. I see it as 
better for getting the design put in place first.

While I still have not learned RenderMan (hence my failure to 
contribute much here), I am intrigued by the idea of using the RIB as 
not only a file format, but as a means of passing rendering 
instructions to the renderer. There are many questions I will have to 
answer for myself before I can discern if this is feasible.

What if we had a means to convert a RIB file, as a single string or 
data stream, to and from a dictionary or NSString? I am still thinking 
that using RIB as our "native" file format is not very Cocoa-like.

Brent Gulanowski
--
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