This section presents the general notions about the scene file (*.scn).
All lines starting with * are messages that will be printed on the screen (without the *) and have no other effect on the scene.
All lines starting with / are comments that will simply be ignored. Longer comments (on more than 1 line) can also be enclosed by /* and */.
The file can contain a number of objects and properties. For each object or property, the file must contain a command made of a name and a body.
The name of the any command must be one of the legal tokens. Although it is recommended that the whole name of the command should be typed, the program only needs the information that can identify the command from other tokens. For example, for the box command, the b letter would be enough, as there is no other command starting with b. For the triangle, 3 letters are needed, because the translation has the first 2 letters in common with it.
The body of any command starts with { and ends with }. It contains all the information concerning the object. This information must be given in the following order:
Any number of properties can be attached to a body (color, translations, rotations, etc.) and will be applied to the objects who's body they are in.
There is a special category of objects, which inherit from the class DVpick_components. In the syntax summary they are denoted as "complex objects". For these objects, the data concerning them can be followed by any of the "pick_components" properties. In the syntax summary, these properties are called "comples properties".
The objects that use 2D or 3D data inherit from this class: the boxes, the lines, the rotation surfaces, the spheres, the surfaces, the triangle strips and grids. The properties related to this class concern especially how to use the coordinates of the points, and is designed for the case when the points have more than 3 coordinates.