On Tue, 13 Apr 1999 10:24:28 -0400, Anthony Bennett wrote:
>One idea I have is an extension project to POV, hopefully for 4.0. My idea
>is to add "mini-shape-studios" (MSS?) which would allow for modelling to be
>included in the official POV. Imagine a lathe-sor-prism shape-studio: you
>could pop up a little grid, and click on the points to make a spline for a
>lathe, or a prism. The ability to visualize these concepts would create
>better images. In this case, all it is is lines, so it should be simple.
>When the user is done, he clicks a 'create' button and it writes to the new,
>official Ken-style of scripting. 

I've thought about these, too.  I tend to call them "wizards", but I like
"mini-modeler" too.  The "studio" thing just doesn't do it for me.

If GUI-Extensions could write to the current editor window, you'd be most 
of the way there as far as the POV end is concerned.  A nice addition would 
be the ability to read the current editor window as well as know the cursor 
position.  Then you could encode the parameters of the object in a comment 
in a machine-readable fashion, so you could click inside one of your mini-
modeler objects, select the appropriate menu item, and bring it back up 
for further editing.  If this were an official patch, you could even syntax-
highlight the stuff between the cryptic comments like MSVC does, to mark it
as wizard-generated code.  A creative coder could even add OpenGL support to 
a mini-modeler, so you could preview your lathe from all different angles.

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