On Apr 4, 2010, at 7:27 PM, Eric Wilhelm wrote: > Yeah, that doesn't exactly make it accessible. Imagine if the IETF > worked like that. Most ISO standards are not available for free, but you also don't have to be accessible to be very effective/pervasive. Some notable examples: C, C++, C#, PDF, MPEG, JPEG 2000, PNG, UML, ODF, OOXML, ... Yeah, they're not all "winners", but they're certainly recognized with plenty of accessible implementations even if their specification was not. I see STEP a lot like PNG in that what is really needed is a good "libpng" (i.e., libstep) that hides most of the complexity from user applications. We've started on such a project for BRL-CAD using the NIST SCL effort as a starting point (and already now have a functioning alpha importer). > One could say the same for Latin as a file format. If you're having > trouble precisely and accurately exporting a design in Latin, it's not > Latin's fault (import is also left as an exercise for the reader.) Tis a good analogy. It might not be my favorite language or a simple language (express), but STEP is sufficiently expressive and wouldn't be too hard at all if there is a good free translation service (a library). Especially considering that the alternatives usually proposed are some obscure new language altogether or worse, a language that lacks the vocabulary for the wide breadth of domain uses. A good library would take care of the other problems you mention. Back to the original poster's remark about available standards for 2D, it's worth pointing out that CGM is/was exactly that (and an ISO standard at that!) before it was replaced in prevalent use by SVG and DXF. There's a format that could probably be dusted off and amended as another option forward specific to 2D geometry. Cheers! Sean