[Openpanorama-info] RE: XML panorama file format

[Joost Nieuwenhuijse]

Mathieu,

I've quickly browsed through your documents. It seems a good starting
point, but it looks a bit too heavy to me. Don't try to reinvent the
wheel - or the web. Define which parts of the specs a viewer application
MUST support and which are OPTIONAL.

For example: you include a scripting language as part of your
specification. Since there are already several scripting languages
around, such as Javascript and Vbscript, I think it would be much better
to only define some kind of 'Object Model', and leave the actual
scripting language outside the specification.

Just like with HTML documents: the DOM specifies the names of the
objects and the names and parameters of the functions, but it does not
define the actual language. So in an HTML document you can write

  if(a==1) document.frame1.location="http://something";;

in  Javascript, and

  If A = 1 Then document.frame1.location="http://something";

in VBScript.

Same point with the GUI specs: I think it would be wise to leave this
out of the spec, because it will be an endless discussion.

For the navigation: give each panorama a 'description' parameter and
leave it up to the viewer software to include a combobox for navigation.
Perhaps this might be enabled or disabled by the author.

Projections: the two 'general' projections are way beyond IMO. On the
other hand, I think it would be useful to have some kind of 'cubic'
projection, with all 6 cube faces embedded in a single file (instead of
6 separate files).

Just my two cents.

Joost