Bravo.
-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Twilleager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 2:54 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [JAVA3D] Java 3D Impressions & Documentation
Okay, let's try this from a different angle. I'm hearing basically
two separate complaints. First, the implementation is buggy. Second,
the documentation lacks much of the philospohy or architecture behind each
feature.
So, why is the implementation buggy. If you look at the history of
the implementation some interesting things show up. The current
implementation is not 3+ years old. We completely rewrote the system
starting in September of 1999. This was first released as 1.2 in
May of 2000 (at the tender age of 9 months). This architecture is our
current architecture. It was designed to allow for the current set of
features as well as many very long term features such as full extensibility
and operating in massively parallel/networked environments. The current
implementation is only 18 months old. It is very young. With a system this
young many different things can cause the system to be unstable. Some
theories have been discussed on this list. We will continue to
work very hard to improve the quality. We will be adding features into
1.3, but the primary focus of the release is quality and performance.
As for the architecture/philosophy documantation, we know that this area
has been lacking. Part of it has been intentional, part of it has not.
We do leave some parts of the specification ambigous so that multiple
implementations could be possible. Some things were left vague to allow
for future feature expansion. But a lot of things could have been explained
better. We are actively trying to figure out the best way to start
documenting and delivering this type of documentation to the community.
If we go to a more fully extensible model in 1.4, then this type of
documentation will be required.
As usual, we are more than happy to add any clarifications as requested
on this mailing list. We really are trying to make the product more
robust and well documented. It just takes quite a bit of time for a
new API and implementation to grow up.
Doug Twilleager
Sun Microsystems
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