David Fontaine wrote:
> 

> 
> > > You're missing the point, an 'official' macro could and would be documented
> > > inside the povray help file just like a built-in pattern. User-created stuff
> > > does sometimes lack good documentation, but that's not limited to macros,
> > > 'patches' can have it too.
> > >
> >
> > <nitpick on>
> > Would you extend this documentation requirement also to the 'official'
> > texture definition? I would be interested to have the documentation
> > for the wood/glass/stones includes files (of 3.1g!).
> > (While you are at it, I'm also interested in the objects from
> > shape*.inc ... and I guess that every include file may be of
> > interest to at least someone, so that would make a lot of new
> > pages)
> >
> > <nitpick off>
> 
> Please read http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/ss.htm
> 

Interesting, but the main problem is to delimit the scope
of the documentation for a future release (whose code
and files is only known by the Team). 
Documenting ONLY the built-in has a big advantage: there
is no last minute addition/update and the Team can focus on
the code.
Moreover, there is few built-in and the syntax is usually
decided and fixed (with optional part too).
With macro, somes may want to make generic parameter
 (such as first argument is always a vector, the second a map,...)
 even when the argument is a non-sense for a specific macro,
whereas others may want a dedicated parameter list per macro.
and so on.

And back to the speed argument, if it is easy to do with a macro,
it's ok with me, especially if the macro avoid me to type a hundred line
(and moreover, allow me to easily perform quickly update to the 
scene [because I only need to modify the macro definition and not
the hundred of call to it]).
But if the pattern is really a basic one, even if it can be done with a 
macro, it may be worth to thing about having it built-in.
That's why I did the triangular and square pattern patch: I feeled it was
unfair to have only the hexagon pattern in 2D.

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