Regarding the pan and zoom tools, they work fine for me even with Java3D, but for the moment I'm only doing 2D rendering, so that is no surprise.
In the long run, when we want to render real 3D data, separate tools is not enough, we really need a viewport model that takes care of 3D aspects (so it would be a viewing frustum) really, and we need tools to support at least the 6 dimensions of rigid motions. Plus scaling, perspective projections etc.
As I said I am open to making the viewport model suite your needs; indeed that represents a nice split of functionality. I was worried that some of the 3D visualization technologies would not let us externalize this idea (ie we would punt data into a scene and the widget would aggressively take everything from there).
Or maybe we no longer need a viewport model at all, if this is just a private contract between the ViewportPane and the Tools? Don't know what side effects that would have.
It is supposed to be a contract between the user and the widget being used to display. The tools represent the actions of the user; and the viewport model is used to transform each click they make into an interaction with some part of the data model (it could be the viewport model; it could be changing the selection on a layer etc...).
When you get to that stage of intergration I expect we will have a couple of excellent design discussions. I recommend we try skype or IRC (or something more efficient then email) when that day comes.
By the way, I've started writing up some background on my protoype in http://udig.refractions.net/confluence/display/HACK/Java3D+Renderer
This is incomplete, but it's a start...
Thanks Harald you are doing an excellent job of communication.
Regards,
Harald
