Rephrase: Objects in strings

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William Sherman -Visualization (wsherman++at++ncsa.uiuc.edu)
Tue, 14 Apr 1998 03:18:34 -0500 (CDT)


> Performers,
>
> I have a couple of questions. I'll include the easy one first.

Okay, I blew the easy question by not being clear.

The gist of what I am looking for is not the ability to turn
strings into Performer objects, but to turn the objects described
by the strings into Performer objects.

> In some Inventor programs I wrote a while back, I often included
> ascii descriptions of simple objects directly in the executable,
> stored as strings. The MakeObject() function then converted the
> Ascii-Inventor format into a node/graph.

For example (and I know I should have done this the first time),
if I want to make an object that consists of four cubes arranged
in a square in an alternating black and white sequence, I can
describe it in Inventor's ascii forat as:

static char *plumb_marker_str =
                "Separator {"
                " Material { }"
                " DEF plumb_translate Translation { }"
                " Translation { translation -0.5 -0.5 0.5 }"
                " Cube { width 1 height 1 depth 1 }"
                " Translation { translation 1 0 -1 }"
                " Cube { width 1 height 1 depth 1 }"
                " Material { diffuseColor 0 0 0 }"
                " Translation { translation 0 0 1 }"
                " Cube { width 1 height 1 depth 1 }"
                " Translation { translation -1 0 -1 }"
                " Cube { width 1 height 1 depth 1 }"
                "}";

Now (in Inventor), if I want to make a node containing the
object described by this string, I do the following:

        SoSeparator *in_graph;
        in_graph = MakeObject(plumb_marker_str);
        plumb_marker->addChild(in_graph);

> I would like to be able to do this in Performer, but haven't
> had any luck finding a similar function.
>
> Is there an easy way to do this?
>
> And, thinking for the future, will this be possible in OpenGL++,
> or whatever will come out next? I thought it was a really handy
> feature of Inventor.

I hope this is a little clearer than my previous ambiguous phrasing.

        Thanks again,
        Bill

> /*************************************************************************/
> /* Bill Sherman (wsherman++at++ncsa.uiuc.edu) */
> /* National Center for Supercomputing Applications */
> /* University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign */
> /* Og - "You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes" */
> /* Spinner - "but facts don't always reveal the truth" */
> /* Robin - "Yeah, but I always figure that's the writers' fault" */
> /*************************************************************************/
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