I'm not comparing three.js to Tao3D. I was using it as an example of a system that, from the information I had from you, produced 3d extruded text more efficiently.
There are other 3d presentation offerings: Aurora 3D, intuiFace, Presente3D, Ventuz, and a host of others -- no programming language (obscure or otherwise) required -- that support video & display walls, live data driven graphics and video feeds, etc.
What does Tao3D offer over competing products like these?
May I suggest that you should study how the Tao3D code works a little more before being so dismissive
I can only go by what you tell me. I have no interest in digging through your code base for Slashdot discussion.
Quick test with what? How did you create a text mesh with Three.js to start with?
With my computer, a code editor, and the (easily accessible) documentation. It took about 10 minutes. Interestingly, it took less time to write and run that test than it took to find the bit of the documentation for Tao3D I quoted in another post.
First, I'd like to point out that even if you can do texture-based rendering, you still need to first render to a texture with polygons or, alternatively, with triangles and a shader doing the Bezier fill.
That statement is either completely false or incoherent. Care to give it another go?
you still need a decent number of polygons per glyph or any non-basic font looks like crap.
Sure. What I'm saying is that, from the numbers you've provided, your product clearly lots of room for improvement. Even with basic Latin, you're averaging 128 triangles/character for flat text!
At least, that's my opinion today. You may easily prove me wrong by porting Tao3D to a Blackberry
Why would I do that? I'm still not convinced the project offers anything over existing solutions. I'm even less convinced, after our discussion here, that it's even a good solution. Further, porting Tao3D would only show that Tao3D was incapable of working on the hardware in question, not that a different program couldn't produce acceptable output.
Look, I understand that you have a lot invested in this product. I can understand your need to defend it against any and all criticism, real and perceived. I really do. So, before this devolves any further, how about we change the subject to something more relevant to readers here? How is your startup going? What markets have you found the most success? Where do you see the product in the future?
What leaks? I've yet to see them since I switch back to FF. I've had this session open for several days, I'm presently at 330mb with three tabs. The most I remember seeing this session (last night, in fact) is 670mb though I don't remember how many tabs I had open at the time.
I think the memory leak meme has outlived reality...
The text of the previous paragraph is 69475 triangles in Arial, 138950 when extruded, 171298 polygons in font "Amaze" not even extruded,
Not extruded? Why not render the text as a texture and slap it on a triangle strip? Why not render the glyphs as a large texture and make clever use of UV's? (You'd use more triangles, 2 per character, but that's still way fewer than the approach you're using.)
You might also want to look at other, clearly more efficient, solutions. Take a look at three.js's ShapeGeometry. and ExtrudeGeometry -- A quick test shows great quality, with far fewer triangles.
That being said, if you want the text to look any good, you have to emit a large number of triangles for even relatively simple text.
On the basis of my experience, I strongly disagree.
Ah, more "programming requires a special mind" bullshit. Back in the 80's, you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a kid under 12 who wrote computer programs as a hobby on their home micro. There were countless children's books on computer programming -- even one mentioned in this thread that changed the life of a young future Slashdotter. That's how difficult it is to learn to program.
Look, I get it. You only have one skill, and you know how easy it is for others to pick-up. That's scary. The only reason people think you're smart or interesting is that you know how to write computer programs. Why, if we brought programming to the masses, you wouldn't be special.
When you give non-programmers good tools, they do amazing things. (User jbolden has a cool story about that, which I'd love to hear more about.) You want to stifle that just to protect your ego?
In Tao3D, you define the notations you want first, you design the (domain-specific) language around your notations second. In existing languages, it's the other way round, the notation is imposed by the language you chose.
If by "existing languages" you're purposefully ignoring the countless languages that did this before, like Joy, Forth, Rebol, etc.
Not mature enough it 2011? My BlackBerry Playbook had excellent support for WebGL in 2011. Not a whole lot has changed since then. Hell, my old Playbook still handles modern WebGL demos without a hitch. What, exactly, were you missing back then?
3.1.1Rewrite declarations The infix -> operator declares a tree rewrite. Figure 21 repeats the code in Figure 3 illustrating how rewrite declarations can be used to define the traditional if-then-else statement.
if true then TrueClause else FalseClause -> TrueClause if false then TrueClause else FalseClause -> FalseClause
Figure 21. Examples of tree rewrites
The tree on the left of the -> operator is called the pattern. The tree on the right is called the implementation of the pattern. The rewrite declaration indicates that a tree that matches the pattern should be rewritten using the implementation.
Not exactly what I expected. For example, in Forth, you'd do something like this: : branch fromr dup tor @ fromr + tor ; : notbranch not fromr dup tor @ 1 - * fromr + 1 + tor ; : if immediate ' notbranch , here 0 , ; : else immediate ' branch , here 0 , swap dup here swap - swap ! ; : then immediate dup here swap - swap ! ; Less clear, without question, but also way less magic. The documentation, unfortunately, doesn't provide enough information for me to have implemented their example on my own, or even understand it fully. I'm sure playing around with it a bit would clear that up, but I already regret the time I've spent on this. I'll let whoever ends up being downloader #47 answer that.
This seems like an odd thing to boast.
Well, it make me dig through that abomination of a website to find out. If that's what they wanted to achieve, they've done it. Unfortunately, I also discovered that this is just a sad attempt to gain attention for a commercial product from a (failing?) 3-year-old start-up.
Obviously you're unaware that this has been tried a number of times before and failed because it is an inferior experience
Okay, now you're talking about web apps, right? Where did it fail? WebOS? No, that was HP's fault. You'll also find that the "experience" on those old Palm smartphones was near universally lauded. iOS? Not only did they not support packaged apps, or offer developers anything to leverage their fledgling platform before offering native apps, they *still* don't have a half-decent browser. When did they enable WebGL? Oh, last month... Web apps on Android, BlackBerry, and FireFox OS have been fantastic, and offer a fantastic user experience. Sure, I can name a few really shitty web apps -- but that's the developers fault, not the fault of the platform, as evidenced by the countless web apps that are indistinguishable from native apps.
(By the same token, I can install any random non-web Android app and almost guarantee you a shitty experience. That's because of the glut of incompetently designed apps by incompetent developers looking to cash-in on the app crazy. That doesn't mean Android is a shitty platform, there are actual reasons for holding that opinion, only that shitty developers write shitty apps.)
again nobody does it because the experience is poor.
See, that's just delusional. Tons of people are developing web apps for desktop and mobile. It's the hot-new-trend, after all. Further, where did you come up with this ridiculous idea that web apps necessarily provide a poor experience? The only thing I remember was some noisy complaints about PhoneGap a few years ago which all traced back to the incompetent garbage that is jquery mobile. (Again, it's not the platform, it's the developer.) Take a look around there are countless high-quality web apps ranging from lob apps to fancy 3d games. Oh, yes, even 3d games running well on low-end FFOS handsets.
Not that it matters, I can't change your mind. You don't seem to care about all of that. Apparently, you just don't like the idea of web apps. That's fine, you're entitled to that opinion, just don't go around spreading nonsense.
We can already to that on every single platform, but the experience is poor and the "standard" is so mixed with different implementations and browser-specific extensions which is why even though we can do it nobody does it.
I fail to see why we need FFOS for ideological reasons when we already have AOSP
Sorry to hear that.
these days there is more competition in the mobile space than you can poke a stick at.
Not really. Just look at your examples: webOS has been all but dead since HP killed it, LG doesn't seem interested in using it on mobiles. Meego is REALLY dead, as in it was terminated in favor of other projects. Tizen, might be someday, maybe. How many years has it taken to appear on a device? Oh, and it just managed to show up on one brand of smartwatch. That's not exactly competition.
You're also ignoring one of the biggest benefits of FFOS -- Open Web Apps. Mozilla and, by extension, consumers win when other platforms support them, even if FFOS fails. Mozilla used the phrase "Breaking the walled gardens" offering that "The norm for mobile platforms tends to be be walled gardens written with proprietary technologies, so apps are locked inside their platforms." Open Web Apps, in contrast "put the developer back in control of every aspect of the app experience — from easy development to distribution to direct customer relationship management." That's a massive win for both developers and consumers. Imagine: the ability to buy apps from your choice of stores, or directly from the developer -or- to sell your app on your choice of stores, or directly to customers, instead of your app being locked up and lost in the over-crowded wasteland that is modern app stores.
? Having a look at the low end FFOS devices the performance is awful with just the OS
I disagree. I have a ZTE Open, and the performance isn't nearly as bad as the reviewers suggest. On the Cloud FX, the one for India, I've seen enough video reviews to call the Ars article that started that meme a flat-out lie.
The real problem is FFOS isn't any better than the incumbents to end users
It doesn't need to be in order to be successful. But that's not really the point, is it? We need FireFoxOS for the same ideological reasons we needed FireFox in the days of IE6.
what is the point of Firefox OS on Raspberry PI?
On the PI? Who knows. It's neat, I guess. I'd rather see it on the desktop, competing with ChromeOS.
Well, Android isn't very good as-is, and it only gets worse on low-end hardware. Android development is a also complete nightmare. (Really, let's be honest here.) Then there's the issue of trust, which I'm sure a lot of users hear can agree is a pretty serious problem. In short, Android kinda sucks.
FFOS is not Android. That's a big win, in my book.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not comparing three.js to Tao3D. I was using it as an example of a system that, from the information I had from you, produced 3d extruded text more efficiently.
There are other 3d presentation offerings: Aurora 3D, intuiFace, Presente3D, Ventuz, and a host of others -- no programming language (obscure or otherwise) required -- that support video & display walls, live data driven graphics and video feeds, etc.
What does Tao3D offer over competing products like these?
May I suggest that you should study how the Tao3D code works a little more before being so dismissive
I can only go by what you tell me. I have no interest in digging through your code base for Slashdot discussion.
Quick test with what? How did you create a text mesh with Three.js to start with?
With my computer, a code editor, and the (easily accessible) documentation. It took about 10 minutes. Interestingly, it took less time to write and run that test than it took to find the bit of the documentation for Tao3D I quoted in another post.
First, I'd like to point out that even if you can do texture-based rendering, you still need to first render to a texture with polygons or, alternatively, with triangles and a shader doing the Bezier fill.
That statement is either completely false or incoherent. Care to give it another go?
you still need a decent number of polygons per glyph or any non-basic font looks like crap.
Sure. What I'm saying is that, from the numbers you've provided, your product clearly lots of room for improvement. Even with basic Latin, you're averaging 128 triangles/character for flat text!
At least, that's my opinion today. You may easily prove me wrong by porting Tao3D to a Blackberry
Why would I do that? I'm still not convinced the project offers anything over existing solutions. I'm even less convinced, after our discussion here, that it's even a good solution. Further, porting Tao3D would only show that Tao3D was incapable of working on the hardware in question, not that a different program couldn't produce acceptable output.
Look, I understand that you have a lot invested in this product. I can understand your need to defend it against any and all criticism, real and perceived. I really do. So, before this devolves any further, how about we change the subject to something more relevant to readers here? How is your startup going? What markets have you found the most success? Where do you see the product in the future?
What leaks? I've yet to see them since I switch back to FF. I've had this session open for several days, I'm presently at 330mb with three tabs. The most I remember seeing this session (last night, in fact) is 670mb though I don't remember how many tabs I had open at the time.
I think the memory leak meme has outlived reality...
The text of the previous paragraph is 69475 triangles in Arial, 138950 when extruded, 171298 polygons in font "Amaze" not even extruded,
Not extruded? Why not render the text as a texture and slap it on a triangle strip? Why not render the glyphs as a large texture and make clever use of UV's? (You'd use more triangles, 2 per character, but that's still way fewer than the approach you're using.)
You might also want to look at other, clearly more efficient, solutions. Take a look at three.js's ShapeGeometry. and ExtrudeGeometry -- A quick test shows great quality, with far fewer triangles.
That being said, if you want the text to look any good, you have to emit a large number of triangles for even relatively simple text.
On the basis of my experience, I strongly disagree.
Also, an F-MRI of the current crop of republicans would show zero activity.
That's not true. When exposed to goatse, activity in the cortical anterior fap gyrus increase by over 9000%.
Ah, more "programming requires a special mind" bullshit. Back in the 80's, you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a kid under 12 who wrote computer programs as a hobby on their home micro. There were countless children's books on computer programming -- even one mentioned in this thread that changed the life of a young future Slashdotter. That's how difficult it is to learn to program.
Look, I get it. You only have one skill, and you know how easy it is for others to pick-up. That's scary. The only reason people think you're smart or interesting is that you know how to write computer programs. Why, if we brought programming to the masses, you wouldn't be special.
When you give non-programmers good tools, they do amazing things. (User jbolden has a cool story about that, which I'd love to hear more about.) You want to stifle that just to protect your ego?
What algorithm are you using? There may be a more efficient approach (er, as in fewer triangles, not less time).
That still doesn't answer my question about what you think is lacking in WebGL.
I'm really interested to see you display 3D extruded arabic text on your 2011 Blackberry ;-)
Why would that be complicated? 3D extruded text is pretty simple, and handling RTL has nothing to do with WebGL.
Judging from the comments above? Nope.
Personally? I'll take easy-to-hold, larger batter, or no-accidental-touches over thinness any day.
In Tao3D, you define the notations you want first, you design the (domain-specific) language around your notations second. In existing languages, it's the other way round, the notation is imposed by the language you chose.
If by "existing languages" you're purposefully ignoring the countless languages that did this before, like Joy, Forth, Rebol, etc.
Not mature enough it 2011? My BlackBerry Playbook had excellent support for WebGL in 2011. Not a whole lot has changed since then. Hell, my old Playbook still handles modern WebGL demos without a hitch. What, exactly, were you missing back then?
From the (horrible) documentation:
3.1.1Rewrite declarations
The infix -> operator declares a tree rewrite. Figure 21 repeats the code in Figure 3 illustrating how rewrite declarations can be used to define the traditional if-then-else statement.
if true then TrueClause else FalseClause -> TrueClause
if false then TrueClause else FalseClause -> FalseClause
Figure 21. Examples of tree rewrites
The tree on the left of the -> operator is called the pattern. The tree on the right is called the implementation of the pattern. The rewrite declaration indicates that a tree that matches the pattern should be rewritten using the implementation.
Not exactly what I expected. For example, in Forth, you'd do something like this:
: branch fromr dup tor @ fromr + tor ;
: notbranch not fromr dup tor @ 1 - * fromr + 1 + tor ;
: if immediate ' notbranch , here 0 , ;
: else immediate ' branch , here 0 , swap dup here swap - swap ! ;
: then immediate dup here swap - swap ! ;
Less clear, without question, but also way less magic. The documentation, unfortunately, doesn't provide enough information for me to have implemented their example on my own, or even understand it fully. I'm sure playing around with it a bit would clear that up, but I already regret the time I've spent on this. I'll let whoever ends up being downloader #47 answer that.
This seems like an odd thing to boast.
Well, it make me dig through that abomination of a website to find out. If that's what they wanted to achieve, they've done it. Unfortunately, I also discovered that this is just a sad attempt to gain attention for a commercial product from a (failing?) 3-year-old start-up.
Most really advance races will have probably passed through their singularity
That seems unlikely. Any advanced race would have locked their equivalent to Ray Kurzweil in the loony bin long ago.
You've got to have Faith, my son.
Obviously you're unaware that this has been tried a number of times before and failed because it is an inferior experience
Okay, now you're talking about web apps, right? Where did it fail? WebOS? No, that was HP's fault. You'll also find that the "experience" on those old Palm smartphones was near universally lauded. iOS? Not only did they not support packaged apps, or offer developers anything to leverage their fledgling platform before offering native apps, they *still* don't have a half-decent browser. When did they enable WebGL? Oh, last month... Web apps on Android, BlackBerry, and FireFox OS have been fantastic, and offer a fantastic user experience. Sure, I can name a few really shitty web apps -- but that's the developers fault, not the fault of the platform, as evidenced by the countless web apps that are indistinguishable from native apps.
(By the same token, I can install any random non-web Android app and almost guarantee you a shitty experience. That's because of the glut of incompetently designed apps by incompetent developers looking to cash-in on the app crazy. That doesn't mean Android is a shitty platform, there are actual reasons for holding that opinion, only that shitty developers write shitty apps.)
again nobody does it because the experience is poor.
See, that's just delusional. Tons of people are developing web apps for desktop and mobile. It's the hot-new-trend, after all. Further, where did you come up with this ridiculous idea that web apps necessarily provide a poor experience? The only thing I remember was some noisy complaints about PhoneGap a few years ago which all traced back to the incompetent garbage that is jquery mobile. (Again, it's not the platform, it's the developer.) Take a look around there are countless high-quality web apps ranging from lob apps to fancy 3d games. Oh, yes, even 3d games running well on low-end FFOS handsets.
Not that it matters, I can't change your mind. You don't seem to care about all of that. Apparently, you just don't like the idea of web apps. That's fine, you're entitled to that opinion, just don't go around spreading nonsense.
We can already to that on every single platform, but the experience is poor and the "standard" is so mixed with different implementations and browser-specific extensions which is why even though we can do it nobody does it.
Okay, reality isn't your thing. That's fine.
I fail to see why we need FFOS for ideological reasons when we already have AOSP
Sorry to hear that.
these days there is more competition in the mobile space than you can poke a stick at.
Not really. Just look at your examples: webOS has been all but dead since HP killed it, LG doesn't seem interested in using it on mobiles. Meego is REALLY dead, as in it was terminated in favor of other projects. Tizen, might be someday, maybe. How many years has it taken to appear on a device? Oh, and it just managed to show up on one brand of smartwatch. That's not exactly competition.
You're also ignoring one of the biggest benefits of FFOS -- Open Web Apps. Mozilla and, by extension, consumers win when other platforms support them, even if FFOS fails. Mozilla used the phrase "Breaking the walled gardens" offering that "The norm for mobile platforms tends to be be walled gardens written with proprietary technologies, so apps are locked inside their platforms." Open Web Apps, in contrast "put the developer back in control of every aspect of the app experience — from easy development to distribution to direct customer relationship management." That's a massive win for both developers and consumers. Imagine: the ability to buy apps from your choice of stores, or directly from the developer -or- to sell your app on your choice of stores, or directly to customers, instead of your app being locked up and lost in the over-crowded wasteland that is modern app stores.
? Having a look at the low end FFOS devices the performance is awful with just the OS
I disagree. I have a ZTE Open, and the performance isn't nearly as bad as the reviewers suggest. On the Cloud FX, the one for India, I've seen enough video reviews to call the Ars article that started that meme a flat-out lie.
The real problem is FFOS isn't any better than the incumbents to end users
It doesn't need to be in order to be successful. But that's not really the point, is it? We need FireFoxOS for the same ideological reasons we needed FireFox in the days of IE6.
what is the point of Firefox OS on Raspberry PI?
On the PI? Who knows. It's neat, I guess. I'd rather see it on the desktop, competing with ChromeOS.
I don't know ... The idea that consumers will behave rationally is pretty funny.
Who would willingly uses iTunes?
Ha Ha! Good one!
+5 Funny!
I couldn't believe it either. I read about this yesterday, so I didn't expect to see it hit Slashdot until next week.
Well, Android isn't very good as-is, and it only gets worse on low-end hardware. Android development is a also complete nightmare. (Really, let's be honest here.) Then there's the issue of trust, which I'm sure a lot of users hear can agree is a pretty serious problem. In short, Android kinda sucks.
FFOS is not Android. That's a big win, in my book.
Why? That is, how do you think the world will be different?
You carry a mighty clue stick.