[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] IAML v1.0 alpha
hi there, after a somewhat long hiatus away from this community and from vrml, i'm back. i'm another person working on 3d data representation, and i've been in serious larval/hermit mode for the past six months or so. my focus is on 2d/3d integration, especially with regards to text and linking. i've come up with a syntax that (as simply as possible, i hope) associates data (for now, text, images and objects) with spatial information, and allows some preliminary kinds of links to be drawn. i'm calling it IAML, information architecture markup language. think storyspace nodes, but in a 3d space. i've also written a good sized chunk of a client that renders it...the client is still a bit rough (writing 3d code has been an interesting challenge). it's demoable now, and i'll have screenshots up soon. the IA of the IAML is, at this point, a bit of a stretch. it's based on the hypothesis that the process of information architecture is, in some way, a process of locating information in space, whether the end user experiences it as such or not. i realize that this is a) altogether unproven (but, i hope, interesting) and that b) i'm overloading the phrase "information architecture" here a bit. i hope the interestingness of work along these lines precludes my hubris in doing so. the basic idea behind the syntax is to take the hard parts of 3d (i.e. the scene graph) and hide as much of it as possible. the snippet below does render in the client i've written, and shows off a goodly chunk of it's capabilities; however, it is not finalized and will remain in flux as the client continues to develop. ergo, i have not developed a dtd or schema for it as yet. i've also tried to take the other hard part of 3d spaces (free navigation...not hard for the quake/doom crowd, but not very practical in a presentation), and hide that by the use of easily navigable visible linking structures. see below for the kind of feedback i'm looking for...this chunk renders the first slide in a slide show (one of the applications i have in mind for the syntax), as well as a bit of other gadgetry... <?xml version="1.0"?> <scene xmlns="urn:vizbang.com:iaml"> <!-- vzPlane's are sort hierarchical basket for ideas...parts of a presentation, chunks of an outline, related subgroups, etc. they render as horizontal planes --> <vzPlane w="40" d="40" position="0 -2 30" color="1 0.18 0.18" title="the technology" closed="FALSE"/> <vzPlane w="40" d="40" position="-30 -2 80" color="0.38 0.78 0.56" title="applications" closed="FALSE"/> <vzPlane w="40" d="40" position="30 -2 80" color="0.18 0.59 1" title="context" closed="FALSE"/> <!-- vzText, quite simply, associates a bit of text with a point in space --> <vzText position="0 0 0" title="intro" ID="1" fontName="Arial" fontSize="18" xPos="10">Vizbang Alpha 0.001 Screenshot Demo 16 November 02000 Da - da@v...</vzText> <!-- vzImg and vzShape load in images and shapes, where a shape can be just about anything expressible in a .x file (for now, this is microsoft's semi-proprietary format for 3d shapes), from terrain to building like shapes to protein structures to ... --> <vzImg position="0 0 50" src="fodder/logo128.bmp" size="8 8 0"/> <vzShape file="fodder/teapot.x" position="-10 0 25" scale="0.9 0.9 0.9"/> <!-- vzLink(s) draw an easily navigable link structure from one part of the scene to another --> <vzLink fromPos="0 0 0" toPos="-20 -2 10" startColor="0.18 0.59 1" endColor="0.18 0.59 1" fromID="text1" toID="text2"/> <vzLink fromPos="0 0 0" toPos="-50 -2 60" startColor="0.18 0.59 1" endColor="0.18 0.59 1"/> <vzLink fromPos="0 0 0" toPos="10 -2 60" startColor="0.18 0.59 1" endColor="0.18 0.59 1"/> </scene> ...i realize this is a little bit of a specialized weirdo syntax and that (especially without a demo or at least some screenshots) it's a little hard to tell what i'm chasing. but what i'm looking for now mainly is intersections. i'm looking at interoperability possibilities with the following standards and products or systems: topic maps/rdf, xLink, VRML, OPML, and existing presentation/authoring systems like PowerPoint. other systems that i'd like to hook up with are blogs, and possibly other content management systems in general. i hope to be in a position to attend some of the upcoming conferences in this space soon; please to forgive if i match up name tags to folks who post about one or the other of these topics a lot and ask for a rundown or pester you with questions regarding your work. (i find that other people's syntaxes usually end up making my head spin, but i'm nonetheless fascinated by the great scope of the work going on here) on a related note, a bit of encouragement: it seems like the overlap between what might loosely be called "syntax people" and "interface/usability people" is kind of small. this could just be my i've got a hammer so everything looks vaguely nail-ish perspective, but it seems like few syntaxes are really developed with end users in mind. i hope this isn't interpreted as flamebait (please spool the thread in the subject line if there's further interest in this), i'm really curious as to what people think on this. possible medium term goal: come up with some best practices for this, for developing human facing (as opposed to application-facing) clients? is this even a useful distinction to make? the bottom line: any feedback greatly appreciated. while the client is still not quite ready for any kind of a release (pending possible development of a business model, among other things), i am able to schedule appointments for demos in the bay area now (or possibly eleswhere with enough warning). i'll be posting screenshots and more info about the client as it becomes available. also, this a bit of a tangential request for this list, but the company that i've been developing this under the auspices of (vizbang software), is currently post-lawyers but pre-revenue and pre-funding. any advice or contacts about changing the status of this (especially the pre-revenue part, i'm hoping for a small vc or other seed roung and quick-to-some-revenue bootstrapy kind of model) would also be greatly appreciated. thanks so much for your time and happy holidays to those who are so inclined, da
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