Jaime Vives Piqueres wrote:


>   POV is a "programmers toy" since the first day of its existance. If
> not, it would have included some interface. It was later that
> non-programmer users had managed to use it, because it was a very simple
> scripting language.
> 
>   Anyhow, what it is turning to be is more like a mathematics toy, bcos
> for many new features you need to understand and visualize many math
> concepts (for isos, functions, etc..). 


Yes, and it's brain-melting sometimes, but I feel it's worth trying to 
find out how to do it. I've never met a modeller I liked, although I was 
rather fond of Cinema 4D - shame about the price and the terrible 
feature set.


>>I started back in the days of 2.2, when the requirements for using POV
>>were more 3D geometry, but now, with Isosurfaces, loops etc. it seems to
>>require programming skills to use to the full.
>>
> 
>   How a scripting language would not require any programming skills?
> What you mean is that now it requires *more* programming skills? No!  To
> do the same things that these new features do, we needed always external
> programming, so these things always required programming skills!


Just now, we can program in POV itself rather than having to write the 
stuff in C++ or whatever. Although I must admit, there are a few places 
I'd like to see if it's possible to make POV's scripting language a 
little nicer for the programming side of things - but then I am a C++ 
programmer at heart, and POV's #while...#end construct gets on my nerves 
for some reason. It must be the # signs.


>>I am not a programmer, this is why I use Moray to put scenes together,
>>but this question was prompted by the number of people in the 'Most
>>common way to make POV files?' thread that have said thay they write, or
>>have written prgrams to output POV code.
>>
> 
>   That shows that "programming" is the usual way for the "mean" POV
> user, as it was since it's firsts days. 


It is, IMO, one of POV's good points. Having text-based, human-readable 
scene files instead of something horrible and binary makes it possible 
for anyone with some programming skill and some ideas to write utility 
programs for POV. It's a fantastic thing, and it's the UNIX way :-)

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