Le Forgeron wrote:
> 
> >, i'm not sure about
> > the meaning of various parameters.
> 
> I tried to keep the same meanings across the various keyword.
> Innocent people are always welcome when writing documentation, because
> they come with the natural questions of any newcomers, instead of
> the overly complicated explications that "experts" usually exchange (in jargon,
> of course!)
> So, Congratulation, you qualify yourself for this task!
> Now, please reorganise your thoughts, and precisely asks all you want to understand.
> (Sorry, but the short answer "everything/all" must be detailed and is not allowed
per se).

All right.  The french description isn't that bad, but my ability to read
french with that many special vocabulary is not that good... Babelfish
also does not do a very good job on it.

So i'm not sure if i qualify for judging the french explanations. ;-) I
had most problems with the parameters specific to the different
tesselation methods.

What would probably help no matter what language are picture tables
varying the parameters.  Like on:

http://www-public.tu-bs.de:8080/~y0013390/pov/rmf/frame.html

The table on the bottom of

http://jgrimbert.free.fr/pov/patch/mesh.html

is a good start (BTW 'accuracy' has a quite different meaning in
isosurfaces or normals, this could lead to some misunderstanding).

> >  There are also differences between the
> > french and english version of the description.
> 
> What difference ? The only french/english is in the first table, which only explains
> the colour code (mandatory or optional parameter/keyword part).
> 
> Aren't you rather confused by the difference between the second and third columns of
> the second table ?

Right, the mixture of french and english in the main page is somewhat
confusing.

> > I also have a suggestion:
> >
> > The 'move < coeff_of_matrix(12) >' could be replaced with a transform.
> 
> Transform: I do not know about it, it seems that megapov introduced this element
>  (at least with some id), but I do not know it from 3.1g (Or it escapes me, which
> is also possible!) and I did not feel from reintegrating that patch too!
> (My base was 3.1g, and I'm very reluctant to additions
> [for instance, I'm against all the UV-mapping stuff, but that's another subject/holy
war])

transforms are already in 3.1.

> And I mainly introduced 'move' before getting the transformation
(rotate/translate/...) on
> warp
> (which is a good addition, IMNSHO, even if 3.5 do it another way), so I'm not
> even sure 'move' is still usefull as option of 'warp {'.
> As a full transformation, 'move {' would really gain from functions, for the time
being,
> I found it rather useless as not fancy deformations could be described with a simple
> linear matrix.
> Moreover, if there was a warp which would do that (is there already ?), there would
be
> really no need for any 'move' at all.

I think custom vector functions and function warps would probably be the
best solution for all those problems, but neither is implemented in 3.5. 
Without those i think 'move' with a transform and 'warp' are sufficient
(but i would consider not using the 'warp' keyword since what's inside the
'{}' isn't a warp like in other occurrences of the keyword.

Same applies for 'select' which is a float function in 3.5.

Another suggestion: using a texture for 'modulation' does not seem a good
idea to me.  A pattern or a function (in 3.5) would be better probably.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, IsoWood include,                 
TransSkin and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/  
Last updated 30 Jun. 2002 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

Post a reply to this message