Randy and others:

Thanks for that vote of confidence. Ultimately I will follow my instincts,
but the reason I am asking the group for feedback is in fact to do my market
research. When first published Ray Tracing Creations there was only a very
tiny mailing list and Drew Wells and I had to send a lot of emails to
discover what the expectations of our users might be, still in the end we
did what we felt was best at that time.

Its clear that POV Ray has done a lot of growing up in the last 6 years
since I published that book, and what it can now do as a procedural language
far exceeds what I ever expected. There are many possible approaches one
could take to a book on POV Ray, and there are probably several volumes one
could publish. We could take the approach that the SDL is a general purpose
language and write a primer on its statements and functions, or we could
focus just the fundamentals of ray tracing and don't go so deep into the
SDL, or we could use Moray to bootstrap the reader so that they are
productive early in the text, then dive into the language statements in more
depth (hoping we have not lost those Moray users to the crutch it provides).
We could use Hamapatch or Povlab instead of Moray or in addition to Moray.

As I look and listen I am beginning to see a structure that will satisfy
everyone which involves more of a spiral approach that winds though the
learning space in a way that all the major topics are presented but
sometimes more than once. I used this approach in Basic Programming Primer
and in C Primer Plus and the with Lafore in Object Oriented Programming in
C++ and the last two of those are still in print after about 5 editions, so
I know that works. I also see that this would not be a small book, the
Materials Editor alone could be a huge chapter, maybe a book by itself. This
might end up being a POV Ray Bible rather than a Primer.

Those are my thoughts and feelings for today, however I am still
investigating. BTW I tried Hamapatch and did not find it anywhere as refined
and complete as Moray. Povlab is a DOS program and I just can't see time
traveling backwards on this book. The idea of writing procedures that do
other things than ray trace with the SDL is clever and cute and might be
worth a few pages to show its flexibility but I don't think diving into that
capability makes any sense right now.

I very much appreciate all the great feedback and ideas that have been
generated by the group. Thanks!

Mitch

"Randy Hawley" <rha### [at] iquestnet> wrote in message
news:3C4### [at] iquestnet...
> Mitchell,
>
> I am usually just a lurker on this group, but with the reception you have
been
> getting on here lately, I just had to speak up.
>
> The Waite group books I remember were all excellent. Period.
>
> Obviously, there would be interest in a new book.  Not to discount the
idea of
> doing some market research, but why don't you follow your own instincts
about
> what to include in your book.  They are your ideas, it would be your book,
and
> if you continue in your tradition of excellence, it will be a good book.
I
> think (I say with my asbestos underwear on) that everybody currently
pitching
> criticism your way should just hold their comments and wait for your new
book
> (if there will be one) to come out.  It will speak for itself.
>
> Respectfully,
>
>     Randy Hawley
>
>
> Mitchell Waite wrote:
>
> > Some people say that the POV Ray SDL is a turn off for new users, others
say
> > that modeling programs are a turn off to scripters There seems to be a
real
> > scism here. There are issues with Moray's right handed polor
coordinates,
> > and some thing sPartch or Hamapatch are a better choce (tho I have not
heard
> > why they are). When I was speaking of putting Moray text in a gray box I
did
> > not mean that text would reproduce the user docs in Moray. I don't see
my
> > book idea as competing with either Moray or POV Ray docs, that would be
a
> > waste of trees. I want to improve the tutorials, not compete with them.
I
> > think that the tutorials in the POV Ray and Moray docs are very uneven,
some
> > are great, some are okay, and some are poor.
> >
> > I know very little about this other products: blender, spatch,
hamapatch,
> > anim8tor, amapi, rhino. I have tried blender but it would not run
properly
> > on my Win2K machine with dual LCD monitors. Are these all freeware
programs,
> > because the one disconnect with Moray is that its retail product and
that
> > does not work very well with the free nature of POV. What about
including
> > some of these products in the gray text, would that be a turn off?
> >
> > I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
> > power without learning the scene description language"? How is that
true?
> > "And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these
modelers
> > yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in
these
> > modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
> > that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.
> >
> > "Furthermore the structure of a book about Moray would should be quite
> > different from one about Povray." I don't see how this follows. Why
would
> > they have to have different structures? Seems like "here is how to do
> > something in POV" could easily be parallel with "here is how its done in
> > Moray", or whatever modeler you are using.
> >
> > I very much appreciate the feelback, its helping me calibrate my ideas
for
> > the team that is forming. Nothing has been decided so this is a great
time
> > for people to jump in and help shape this project.
>

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