RE: [cgmo-webcgm] ISSUE: aci/viewer association

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

Hi Dieter, Dave,

Option 2 and 3 could imply that the ACI is applied 'per CGM file'; that
would increase the complexity of the implementation (for all vendors).

Can't the website provide a hyperlink to the ACI file? The user would
download the ACI and save it in the appropriate location for that
viewer?

Dave, I think you are 'stretching' the requirements. The group agreed to
standardize our preferences files, which meets the requirement. You are
now asking about a common association... Please suggest something that
addresses your concern with minimal implementation work from vendors;
i.e., does not require to apply the ACI each time a CGM is loaded.

I think it is fair to say that vendors have a limited number of
resources. I would have thought the goal of a new specification was to
encourage the creation of new interactive CGM files; as oppose to
encouraging the circulation of older (valid?) files.

This issue/feature has been the most active topic since the WebCGM 2.1
re-charter. I, myself, am looking for closure on it.

Benoit


-----Original Message-----
From: Weidenbrueck, Dieter [mailto:dweidenbrueck@ptc.com] 
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2008 5:06 PM
To: Cruikshank, David W; CGM Open WebCGM TC
Subject: RE: [cgmo-webcgm] ISSUE: aci/viewer association

David,

I can see several ways forward here:

(setting an environment variable is not one of them because IT folks
don't like if we intrude the system more then necessary)

1. Standardize the location
Agree on a single location that a viewer has to look at for the file.
Don't think this would work, too many variants here with Vmware and with
server hosted prefs.

2. Use a URL to tell the viewer about a prefs file Create a URI that
would tell the viewer where to find a prefs file, e.g.
...dummy.cgm#acifile(pathToFile)
The viewer could ignore dummy.cgm and only download the aci file I
consider this to be a hack (possibly a bad one)

3. Create a DOM call to tell the viewer
myViewer.loadACIFile(fullPath);
This would be a straightforward way to tell the viewer where to find the
file and what to do with it.
The viewer could then copy the file into a location that it likes, and
merge the content with whatever ist own prefs are.

4. Simply provide the aci file to the end user and ask him to store it
in a special location Not a good solution, we could stay with what we
have now, should be more reliable.

Did I miss an option?

Regards,
Dieter

-----Original Message-----
From: Cruikshank, David W [mailto:david.w.cruikshank@boeing.com]
Sent: Montag, 19. Mai 2008 22:56
To: CGM Open WebCGM TC
Subject: [cgmo-webcgm] ISSUE: aci/viewer association

From the minutes of the TC telecon of 14 May:

AI - Someone should draft an informative annex on how an environmental
variable or some such method could be used to specify the file

I think this tells me that the result of the discussion was that we
could standardize the format of the the aci, but how it was attached to
a viewer was "unspecified" except for an informative suggestion?

Can the viewer vendors not implement a common association method?

In the case of myself building an IETP, there is probably not a problem
if I have to deal with a different method for each vendor, because my
IETP is going to use a single viewer.

However, remember, my use case is delivering a web site to a customer
with the only requirement that he have an html browser with a WebCGM
plugin.

I don't think an informative annex solves this problem.  Or am I missing
something?

Dave
Technical Fellow - Graphics/Digital Data Interchange Boeing Commercial
Airplane 206.544.3560, fax 206.662.3734 david.w.cruikshank@boeing.com


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