[vos-d] thoughts for 0.24

[Peter Amstutz]

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Alright, tentatively, here's what is on the menu for 0.24:

  * Move to bzr for repository access.  I'm currently testing this, and we 
are waiting for a new version of bzr before this can go live.

  * OS X support (for real).  Adu is working on it, and also I have a Mac 
on my desk now.  It's old and slow, but it's a start.

  * Make Property be a template.  This provides various advantages. First, 
the property class would store the "real" data type (int, float) instead 
of writing it out to a string and having to parse it every time, so it 
would be faster.  Second, it would eliminate the ugly (ugly, ugly, ugly) 
getProperty/setProperty API that has several dozen special cases for a 
variety of data types.  Third, it would enforce the currently-ignored 
datatypes on properties.  Fourth, it would allow for selecting different 
transport encodings, such as either a text encoding or a binary encoding.

  * New connection system, based on public key fingerprints.  This is still 
in the design stages, but it is important as it will be a fairly low-level 
change to VOS that will solve a lot of problems and add important new 
capabilities in terms of security and authentication.

  * X3D interchange profile support (requires object hierachies in A3DL) 
Discussed a bit in my previous email.  There is a relatively lightweight 
subset of VRML/X3D that is mainly concerned with geometry and texturing. 
I want to support seamlessly loading that.

  * Python.  Basically spend a few weeks seeing if the Python bindings can 
be brought up to speed, and write an omnivos module that allows running 
python scripts stored in properties.

  * misc:clickable - very basic interaction hook, would indicate clicking 
on an object should send a "clicked" message.  Would allow for simple 
world interaction, when paired with python scripts.

  * Layers in A3DL - a new rendering model for A3DL.  Have a client-side 
vobject representing the actual browser view.  This has a list of layers, 
which are rendered in order, possibly clearing the z-buffer between each 
layer.  A typical example would be a 3 layered scene, with three layers: 
the skybox, the actual shared scene, and a HUD or overlay GUI which is 
specific to the user.  Each layer is rendered on top of the next and with 
a separate view.

Other stuff: fix irc bridge, make ter'angreal ask you for a name when you 
use it, improve the UI, change the A3DL coordinate system (!), redo the 
web page, incorporate adu's new logo, make sure VOS works over slow 
modems, work on our marketing to developers...


- -> Discussion:  Am I leaving anything out?  At the current pace this is 
easily six months of work and probably more, so if possible we don't want 
to add any tasks and if possible it might be preferable to break things up 
more and do 1 feature = 1 release (although development of different 
things tends to be interleaved which makes that difficult).


[   Peter Amstutz   ][ tetron at interreality.org ][ piamstutz at anteon.com  ]
[Lead Programmer][Interreality Project][Virtual Reality for the Internet]
[ VOS: Next Generation Internet Communication][ http://interreality.org ]
[ http://interreality.org/~tetron ][ pgpkey:  pgpkeys.mit.edu  18C21DF7 ]
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