"Mitchell Waite" <mit### [at] dnaicom> wrote in message
news:3c4c37c0@news.povray.org...
> 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.

Sounds good.  For what it's worth, here's my two cents:

Try organizing the book in separate sections on, for instance, modelling
via:
CSG
Patches
Functions
Animation
Materials

Of course, you would have an introductory section which covered the bare
necessities of each; after that, each section deals with ~only~ things
related to it (beginning with "CSG stands for..." and ending with a dragon
modelled entirely by spheres).  The animation section, of course, would have
to incorporate just about everything previous :)

BTW, one thing about examples I've noticed (not necessarily yours, just in
general): although commenting the code is very helpful in and of itself,
comments should also suggest things in the example that can be changed by
the user (generally describing the effects).  That is, not just saying "Then
we type <this>, and it does <this>", but saying "Type <this> to do <this>,
or change <this part> and it gets bigger!"  Just a thought :)

...Chambers

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