3edf5487$1@news.povray.org...
> Roughly speaking, whoever supports a file format best gains the
> majority of the user base and relegates other supporters to the sidelines,
> or even displaces them entirely. But the users decide what constitutes
> "best", so whatever feeling of control developers have is illusory.

The point you're missing is that in the case the Povray, the users are also
the developers. It's not a users vs developers game. The two latest members
of the POV-Team (Nathan Kopp and Ron Parker) started out as patchers, took
it on their own to add features that became extremely popular, maintained
and supported complex multipatches for a while (thus demonstrating their
goodwill and ability to interact with users) and were quickly "promoted" as
developers.
The fact is, if you're a proven talented developer, create POV-Ray code that
1) works 2) is actually useful and 3) doesn't turn into a support headache,
your work will find its way into a future POV-Ray. I too was wondering about
the forking problem a few years ago (I've been using patches since 1996) but
it just didn't happen and the system self-regulated very nicely... which is
an amazing socioeconomic phenomenon indeed...

>Software is prone to that phenomenon because myths build up easily about
>software, and the only way to change thinking is to just develop working
>code and demo it.

That's certainly true, and could be the case for a scanline alternative.
But beware of developer's hubris, something we've seen a lot in this groups,
i.e. announcements/proposals from programmers about radical features
supposed to change the future of Pov-Ray, but that eventually came to nought
for various reasons, the main one being that the developers weren't familiar
enough with POV-Ray itself and how it is actually used.
My only advice would be for you to start using POV-Ray yourself to create
complex scenes and animations (I'm not talking about demo scenes, but images
created for the IRTC or another real-life purpose) and then rethink your
patch from this experience.

G.

--

**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray and Poser computer images
- Posters

Post a reply to this message