RE: [cgmo-webcgm] Flow of electricity

["Bezaire, Benoit" <bbezaire@ptc.com>]

Hi Ulrich,

I got slightly carried away in my previous post, sorry.

I get tired of the slow pace I guess, but I have to get use to it.

Not having seen 'real' user sample files, I think the decision might be premature. We have two users so far, Lockheed and Boeing. If they could send us some static CGMs they would like to get animated; I think the group could make a better decision on how to proceed.

Benoit.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ulrich Laesche [mailto:ulrich@ematek.de] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 9:26 AM
To: Bezaire, Benoit; cgmo-webcgm@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: AW: [cgmo-webcgm] Flow of electricity

Hi Benoit,

Why are you getting tired?  I would rather say that Lofton' summary is very helpful, especially:

a.) nothing more in 2.1:  people will continue to do DOM animation with 1.0 and 2.0, as M&L and as Stuart.
b.) a little more help in 2.1 with a couple things that would simplify DOM animation
c.) a simple XCF-based set of animation declaration elements (in addition or instead of #b).
...
d.) like circle.svg -- intra-WebCGM embedded animation declaration elements, enabling much of the SMIL/SVG-like functional capability.

This list could be extended with topic e) from your mail:

" PTC sent a detailed message about it's declarative animation support"

We simply need to make a decision between these approaches and clarify a few details.  Let's discuss about this today.

Thanks and regards
Ulrich


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Bezaire, Benoit [mailto:bbezaire@ptc.com]
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 3. Oktober 2007 15:00
An: cgmo-webcgm@lists.oasis-open.org
Betreff: RE: [cgmo-webcgm] Flow of electricity

I'm getting tired of these threads. 

I was disappointed with the progress made in Seattle. I was disappointed by the minutes upon my return from vacation. Before I left, PTC sent a detailed message about it's declarative animation support. We got no feedback (again). I was expecting a Transform proposal, but it seems like there was a misunderstanding. Where does that leave us? I think it leaves us with Forrest email (Sept 11):

Move, rotate or scale an object.
Show progressive movement of liquid, gas or current through a wire or pipe Show directional flow of liquid, gas or current in a wire or pipe Show changes in levels of liquid in a container A method that would switch between two styles of an object periodically.
(flash or blink)
Pan or zoom to a section of the drawing.

I don't have any other requirements to forward the group. I guess I'll wait.

Benoit.

-----Original Message-----
From: Lofton Henderson [mailto:lofton@rockynet.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 6:36 PM
To: Bezaire, Benoit; cgmo-webcgm@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [cgmo-webcgm] Flow of electricity

Benoit et al --

I have been reading and pondering all of this thread.  I'll dump some cumulative thoughts in reply to Benoit's opinion piece...

At 10:50 AM 10/2/2007 -0400, Bezaire, Benoit wrote:
>Hi Stuart,
>
>That's a nice little animation. Clever!
>
>If I remember correctly, we do have a remove style... you have to do:
>setStyleProperty( prop, "inherit" );
>
>I have a felling I'm not about to make any friends with what I'm about 
>to say; but I have to say it since I think it matters.
>
>Although the result Stuart generated is good looking (which is a great 
>positive), I would not encourage users to do this. I would argue that 
>it takes too long to author such an animation. Equivalent results can 
>be achieve faster in other file formats.

Hmmm, that sounds to me like, "...instead producing some JavaScript, you should convert your graphics to another format and don't use WebCGM".
Some people (Molly/Larry at least, and maybe only them) seem to buck this advice.

Stuart's code is similar in effect to one of the Boeing examples (demo'd by M&L at Seattle F2F).  But its implementation is *much* simpler than how they are now achieving the same effect with CGM.  M&L have apparently rejected other formats like Flash.

I agree with what several people have said in this thread -- whatever the nature of any further potential animation support in WebCGM, we do not imagine many people hand-coding these things.  (What do you think this is, SVG?  ;-)  )

Even the current (CGM) Boeing animations, which are much more complex structurally, are produced by tools and experts, not by end users.


>If we want animations to be frequently used in CGM we need easier 
>methods than what is shown in this example (I'm mostly referring to the 
>flow aspect). The electrical path was broken down into multiple 
>fragments, then each were assigned a specific name/id. I would argue 
>that most revisions of this illustration breaks the animation.

Well, Stuart's animation is manipulating the visible styles and attributes of named objects.  Therefore, would it be any worse than XCF-based declarative animation (an external file that attaches animation declarations to named objects)?

>Additionally, I suspect that customers wiring diagrams are 20x more 
>complex; thus, authoring animation must be much easier.

Point of information... The real M&L sample was indeed based on a much more complex diagram.  But they were still step-animating just a handful of circuit pieces (line segments) in any one animation sequence.


>Attached is an example of what I mean (in SVG). Displayed are two (out 
>of many) ways of showing flow, both used at the same time. In this 
>example, if the wire (say during a revision) goes from a rectangle to a 
>some sort of polygon, or if the battery/switch are moved to a new 
>location... the animation still work.

Two comments.  First, reading the SVG code, with smooth motion animation

and smooth attribute animation it already exceeds the baseline requirements we have heard -- step animation -- from at least two sources so far.

Second, that level of immunity to editing ("goes from rectangle to
polygon") is provided in your SVG example by indirect reference to a named path within an animateMotion element (which is an SVG-specific extension to SMIL 2.1, correct?).  Am I correct that this level of sophistication is beyond what you support in your private WebCGM animation subset for IsoDraw/IsoView?

I haven't thought it through completely, but I'm unsure that you could achieve that in WebCGM without embedding the animation elements directly

within the WebCGM instance.


>Again, I'm not opposed to animation in CGM, but I very much favor a 
>declarative approach than a DOM approach.
>
>Thoughts?

I don't really disagree with anything you have said.  I think our difficult task is to decide where we should set our sights, in the spectrum from ZERO to full-SVG/SMIL-like.  There are levels of possibilities:

a.) nothing more in 2.1:  people will continue to do DOM animation with 1.0 and 2.0, as M&L and as Stuart.
b.) a little more help in 2.1 with a couple things that would simplify DOM animation
c.) a simple XCF-based set of animation declaration elements (in addition or instead of #b).
...
d.) like circle.svg -- intra-WebCGM embedded animation declaration elements, enabling much of the SMIL/SVG-like functional capability.

We can't go to #d in a quick 2.1, and perhaps never -- not only is there

the risk that the vendors might not follow, but I'm not sure that I can envision this stuff intra-WebCGM, i.e., animation elements within the metafile itself (like circle.svg).

Whereas I can see "animate a picture" within the scope of WebCGM, I'm not yet sure I can see "animated picture".  (If you know what I mean.)

All for now,
-Lofton.


>-----Original Message-----
>From: Lofton Henderson [mailto:lofton@rockynet.com]
>Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 6:10 PM
>To: Galt, Stuart A; cgmo-webcgm@lists.oasis-open.org
>Subject: Re: [cgmo-webcgm] Flow of electricity
>
>Stuart --
>
>Good stuff!  Again, we should be looking to put your examples (and 
>anyone
>else's) of 2.0 capabilities somewhere on the Web site.  So, aside from 
>technical (and 2.1 rqts questions), there is the Education/Outreach
>question:  when and where can we put these up and direct people to
them?
>
>Technical questions...
>
>At 01:46 PM 9/28/2007 -0700, Galt, Stuart A wrote:
> >[...]
> >As I start making more complex images/applications I am finding
myself
> >wishing I had a either getStyleProperty() or removeStyleProperty()
>
>Is the "get" an inquiry function?  Do you actually want both "get" and 
>"remove", or did you really mean "either...or"?
>
>Do you propose that these be added to the 2.1 wish list?
>
> >method
> >(I realize that this is difficult to implement) and the ability to
make
>
> >several DOM changes without waiting for a redraw between each one.
>
>I guess this has now been added to the 2.1 wish list.
>
>-Lofton.
>
>