Next release of collada spec

Hello,

I was wondering what the roadmap for the collada specification looks like.
I just wrote up a bit of code to implement the 1.3 spec assuming that the xml would still be mostly usable moving forward (it is extensible markup language).

Anyway, the spec changed the library tag considerably, and while I agree that it changed for the better in some regards…
Library with an attribute of geometries to Library_Geometries

I was wondering are there any other major breaking changes to renaming of already used tags (especially tags with attributes) in the plans…

ie.) is it going to be just plain Geometries with sub geometry elements later. What’s the use of the Library word in front of Geometries now except as a pointer to the data that used to be contained in that same tag.

As long as you the design philosophy in the document remains consistent we can more easily plan for changes.

Adding elements and attributes is easy enough to handle. Renaming existing elements based on the parent element and their attribute is annoying, and will get out of hand if done through minor version changes.

Again, I’m glad that you made this change because it is better and should have been done in the original spec. I just want to avoid the problems listed above as much as possible.

COLLADA 1.4 has been out for 9 months or so now. We have even made a patch release 1.4.1 that fixes a lot of bugs and is 99% backward compatible with 1.4.0 (if someone took advantage of something buggy that might invalidate them)

We decided to make MANY changes between 1.3 and 1.4. Pretty much 1.3 is dead and not supported anymore. 1.4 is the “real” first release of COLLADA since it is the first release as a Khronos standard.

Now that COLLADA is a standard you can expect a lot more stability. All patch releases 1.4.X WILL BE as close to 100% backwards compatible as possible. The working group has been turning down changes because it breaks compatibility. We say “wait for 1.5” but seriously, 1.5 isn’t on our radar.

-Andy

Excellent. Thank you very much.

This is very good news!!