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From: john13@garfield.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: IFF for 3D packages?
Message-ID: <4271@garfield.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 2-Dec-87 23:30:17 EST
Article-I.D.: garfield.4271
Posted: Wed Dec  2 23:30:17 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Dec-87 01:48:15 EST
References: <4VfpM8y00WAKzW005j@andrew.cmu.edu> <4592@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell)
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Organization: Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's
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>In article <4VfpM8y00WAKzW005j@andrew.cmu.edu> mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) writes:
>>With all the talk about interchange programs between Videoscape 3D,
>>Sculpt 3D, Forms in Flight, etc etc. I begin to wonder why an IFF
>>format for describing three-dimensional objects has not surfaced.
>>After all, isn't the whole intention of IFF to avoid kldugy
>>conversion programs and allow various packages to work in tandem?
>

[Leo Schwab gives examples of the many considerations for such a standard]

I'm under the impression that any IFF forms you don't understand, or your
program isn't concerned with, you can ignore. I'm surprised that more use
hasn't been made of this... if 'twas me designing the format for an image
or other file, I'd let you put a textual description of the file as an IFF
form inside it (maybe even a description of the fine details of the file
format); as an option, perhaps encode the same information in two different
ways -- as normal IFF, and maybe as specs for a 16 million colour image. An
IFF reader would still only read the forms it knew and display it properly.
Sure it would be very space-consuming, but you'd only use these options
where you wanted to provide extra info/compatibility for another package
or person.

That's why I hope that whatever standard is agreed upon, will let Sculpt
encode more information about, say, palette than Videoscape does, and
Videoscape encode more information about, I don't know, complex polygonal
shapes; all that's common to the features of the two programs would be
available to either, without having an IFF standard for 3D that conformed
to the "lowest common denominator" (I'm thinking of awful graphics printouts
right now and shuddering :-). 

John
-- 
"A Chinese soldier in Tibet who tried to tear off a British woman's Sergeant
 Bilko T-shirt has become the first known case of someone mistaking Phil
 Silvers for the Dalai Lama."
				-- Toronto Globe & Mail, Nov. 14/87