VermelGen Version 0.1

Copyright Justin Couch and Cameron Gillies
The Virtual Light Company 1996
justin@vlc.com.au
csg@sg.adisys.com.au

Sections copyright Thomas Koch of GMD Germany
thomas.koch@gmd.de

A GNU production.
See the file license.txt for licensing conditions.

VermelGen is our attempt at producing a free VRML 2.0 editor. It is entirely
written in Java and uses the External Application Interface (EAI) to talk to any
VRML 2.0 capable browser that supports the EAI.

The source for this applet can be found at

ftp://ftp.vlc.com.au/pub/VermelGen/

Last updated 14:45 +10.00 5th Jan 1997
 
And a web page at (After the 8th Jan 1997)

http://www.vlc.com.au/VermelGen/

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Installation

To install this program you need to have an empty directory which you then
unpack the archived file into. It creates a number of subdirectories. Do not
change the name of these directories unless you really know what you are doing
with java.

In the top level directory (eg C:\Program Files\VermelGen\) you will need to
edit the HTML file called index.html. In there you will need to change two
things - the CODEBASE and top_directory parameters. These need to be changed to
the directory that you installed the files into.

Once this small change is made you can start up you Java enabled browser and
open the HTML file.

If you are a Netscape user on either Win95 or NT4 you must read the file
NetscapeUsers.txt. It contains some very important information that about some
problems experienced with there operating systems and the VRML browsers.

---------------------------------------------

Features:

o This is a very early alpha release. It handles the most common nodes that
  you will be using in VRML 2.0. At the moment this amounts to:
	- Transform
	- Group
	- Shape
	- Box
	- Cylinder
	- Cone
	- Sphere
	- Appearance
	- Material
	- TextureTransform
	- ImageTexture
	- MovieTexture

o Add and delete of supported node types. Cut and paste is not yet supported

o Browser independant. Because it uses the VRML 2.0 EAI there is no Web Browser
  dependent features. This same interface also means that the software is
  independent of the VRML 2.0 plugin that is used allowing you complete
  flexibility.

o Will work even without a browser - ie on any Java enabled applet viewer.
  The software attempts a number of different methods to grab a handle on the
  VRML 2.0 browser. If none are available then it defaults to standalone
  operation. All functionality is still available except you do not get output
  to the Browser.

o Minimal file size generation. The editor will only write to the output the
  fields that are not default values. This keeps file size to a minimum. For
  readability the output is correctly indented. To further reduce file size you
  can do the normal methods of using a file cruncher or gzip.

o Syntax checking. The editor will not allow you to generate a syntactically
  incorrect file. It pulls you up if you try to add a node in the wrong spot.

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Bugs and Notes:

- Due to the amount of initialisation at the start you might find that even after
  the Editor window has popped up you will not be able to do anything. Wait for
  the harddrive to stop thrashing and then try again :) On a P166/64MB this takes
  about 5 - 7 seconds.

- Generating source files. At this stage I have not implemented the code to
  write the VRML source out to a file. Much of this is to do with problems with
  security of applets and the individual browser used. Some will not let you
  write to the harddrive - even as a trusted applet. This will be coming in a
  future version

- Getting started. To add your first node to the scene you will need to
  click on the unknown.wrl node on in the display before doing anything. The
  browser will pop up an error dialog telling you to select a node if you don't

- Resize and scrolling of the main window. There are some bugs with the resize
  and display of the scroll bars in the main window. Sometimes when you resize
  to smaller than the displayed error the scrollbars disappear completely! If
  this happens resize the window by a very small amount until they reappear.

- Multiple string fields (in the URLs for Image/Movie Texture nodes, etc) At the
  moment it only handles the first string typed in. Any after that will be
  printed out as "null" in the file. You will need to remove these references
  before viewing the file correctly.

- deleting a Shape node currently does not remove it from the Scene. Why? I
  don't know. I'm looking into it at the moment.

Apart from that I believe the program is pretty rock solid for an alpha release.
In just about every case it will stop you before you attempt to do something
that has not been implemented yet. I would suggest however that you have the
Java console (or whereever your Systme.out.print stuff gets shunted to) open
while running the program.

As usual insert the usual legal crap in here about use of the product and no
warranty yadda, yadda, yadda. Hey, you take, you try, you tell me if you like
or not and any bugs.

Justin Couch & Cameron Gillies
5 Jan 1997