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Using your Web browser, you can access a phenomenal amount of information on the Web. Educational, commercial, and personal Web sites provide free software, product information, tips on product use, price comparisons, technical specifications, news, rumors, answers to frequently asked questions, and examples on using VRML, HTML, and other computing technologies.
The Web is changing so quickly that we do not recommend the purchase of any so-called Web yellow-pages books. Such books provide a snapshot of the Web that, because of publishing production schedules, are always at least three months out of date. Instead, we recommend that you become familiar with a few major Web starting points. Any good starting point provides a searchable index of a portion of the Web's content. Some starting points also provide additional services to help you quickly find the information you need. We recommend the following major Web-search starting points:
The VRML Repository is the principal Web site for information about VRML and related technologies. If you're looking for information on VRML, the VRML Repository is always the best place to start.
The VRML Repository is hosted by the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and maintained by the authors of this book. The repository includes a tremendous amount of information about available VRML browsers, VRML authoring tools, graphics display hardware, and input hardware. The repository provides links to the official VRML specification, tutorials on VRML, documents that answer frequently asked questions, and links to other important specifications. The repository also provides information on VRML object libraries, texture libraries, and sound libraries, as well as links to VRML worlds available all over the Web. The repository's content is updated daily to track the rapid evolution of VRML. We recommend the VRML Repository as the starting point for any VRML-related Web search.
This book's CD-ROM includes all of the examples, texture images, sounds, and scripts discussed in the book. This information is also available on the Web at the John Wiley & Sons Web site. Also included at the Wiley Web site is an errata document, as well as notes on additions and changes made to the VRML specification since this book and CD-ROM were produced.
VRML 2.0 integrates a number of key technologies to enable you to create compelling multimedia environments. The official, detailed specifications for VRML and related technologies are available on the Web, maintained by several standards organizations including:
The VRML 2.0 specification provides the official definition of the features of VRML 2.0. The language specification is maintained by the VRML Consortium and is available at the following addresses:
The Java and JavaScript language specifications are available at the following addresses:
The GIF, JPEG, MPEG, and PNG specifications are defined by ISO and W3C documents available at the following addresses:
The MIDI synthesizer performance file format specification is available from the International MIDI Association at the following address:
The WAV digital sound file format is also known as the RIFF or WAV RIFF format. The WAV specification is available in Microsoft technical documentation, and is briefly described at the following address:
Language tags are used in the FontStyle node to specify variations in font use particular to a selected language. Language tags themselves are the subject of the IETF RFC 1766 specification is available at the following address:
Each language tag contains a language code and a territory (country) code. Language and territory codes are the subject of the ISO 639 and ISO 3166 standards, respectively. Both standards are available for purchase at ISO's site. The essential lists of standard language and territory codes, however, are freely available on the Web.
MIME types, used to identify broad categories of Web information, are the subject of the IETF RFC 1521 and 1522 standards available at the following addresses:
The structure of URLs and relative URLs is the subject of the IETF RFC 1738 and RFC 1808 standards available at the following addresses:
UTF-8, or UCS (Universal Character Set) Transformation Format 8, is a computer encoding scheme (transformation format) for storing characters from a very large international character set that includes English characters, as well as those for Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and many other languages. The 8 in the UTF-8 name indicates that the basic unit of encoding is an 8-bit byte.
The UCS is defined by the ISO 10646-1:1993 standard and the pDAM 1-5 extension. The UCS specification is available for sale only. ISO sales information is available at the following address:
The UTF-8 character encoding scheme specification is available at the following address: