POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : The Language of POV-Ray : Re: The Language of POV-Ray Server Time
10 Aug 2024 23:19:53 EDT (-0400)
  Re: The Language of POV-Ray  
From: Ken
Date: 11 Mar 2000 05:32:29
Message: <38CA2128.BD294B07@pacbell.net>
Gilles Tran wrote:

> Of course I don't want to be conservative : POV can (should) evolve.
> But my personal wish list is made of features that would make the
> user's life easier in terms of creation (like a really

> support of some popular mesh formats, or a simple way to make
> patina and cracks, or built-in "fur" and "tree" engines etc.).

Here I will definitely agree with you. I would like to see procedural
features added that ease the creation of scene building without having
to resort to adding difficulty to the language itself. If you look at
the wealth of plug-ins available for 3DS Max you will see that they
offer some powerful features, that are easy to use, and the functions
that make them work are transparent to the user. The question that
needs to be asked is if the program exists for programmers or if it
exists for users who don't care how it works so long as it does.

> I have to recognize that some programming features (like arrays
> or macros) that seemed complex at the beginning (yes, for a
> non-programmer, even arrays are complex !) proved themselves
> very useful. My current concern, which I seem to share with
> Ken Tyler, is that many of features I've seen on programmers'
> "wish lists" looked like they would surely improve the lives
> of programmers and possibly make pov faster, or more flexible,
> but that they would also make a few non-programmers cringe.
> For instance, some people may have fun browsing a 500-page
> long manual on OO programming, some others don't.

Good point(s). What I also fear is that if the programming language
is extended in POV-Ray to include OO programming, for () loops, and
all of the other programming suggestions that have been addressed
in this thread, is what is going to happen when some non programming
literate POV-User comes to the news groups seeking help and some
programmer type gives them an example in the form of these new
features ? The programmer types (and there a lot of them here in the
groups that answer questions on a regular basis) will quickly adopt
the attitude that everyone thinks like them and give examples in
their language style of choice, while the real truth of the matter
is that they could express themselves in a way that the people
seeking help will not understand a word they are saying.

> To answer Ken's questions, I surely would experience trouble if
> the language changed completely.

I would probably not use the new version if it became to hard to
learn. This would restrict me to using the older versions of the
program and I would miss out on new features.

> I've got my own legacy of scenes
> (which already hard to maintain due to version changes and
> immoderate patch use), and I'm able to work fast because I
> know my way in POV (provided the help file is open !).
> So having a new language format would be like using a
> new software : I would take the trouble to learn it only if
> it was clearly "competitive", in terms of user-friendliness
> and features, over the current POV implementation.

I agree here too. I have more .pov files that you can shake a stick
at and I am comfortable now, after hundreds of hours of using the
program, with it's current language structure.

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/


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