I know that GUI wouldn't be the perfect
example...

But take my LSSM, or Rune's and my
particle system. If one could easily set
things like
"lssm_simulation_steps" in global-settings,
and then have some object like
lssm_rectangle{ Corner_1, Corner_2, Corner_3}
and *additionally* have them parse faster,
by just putting a pre-parsed bytecode in
some directory for POV-Ray to find
it, that would be neat! Right now one has
to include the files, and they don't have
much access to POV-Internal stuff like
rays for lighting calculations and such.

For platform-independance, I guess a
faster parser could be quiet sufficient,
but some more object-oriented style
would be nice. E.g. macro's with same
name, but if I leave out a texture, it
will still work:
#macro Tex_Translate(Position,Texture)
 texture{Texture translate Position}
#end
#macro Tex_Translate(Texture)
 texture{Texture}
#end
#macro Tex_Translate(Position)
 texture{Default_Texture translate Position}
#end

This would require POV to understand the
difference of vectors/floats/textures/objects
etc for parameters, but that would make some
handling easier.

All in all, I'm no expert on this, but a
functionality which would writing own
camera-functions like Slime (if I'm not
mistaken) did, or how the original isosurface
made it into MegaPOV, easier, without
compiling your own POV-Version, that
would be great.

But I'm probably annoying you with
my ignorant rambling, its just a dream
of mine... ;-)

-- 
Tim Nikias v2.0
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights
Email: no_lights (@) digitaltwilight.de

> Tim Nikias v2.0 wrote:
> >
> > Still, even a faster compiler could count as
> > being Plug-In Support. I was just thinking
> > in terms of Cinema4D, Maya and such, where
> > "outside" scripts can be used quiet efficiently to
> > enhance the GUI (although POV doesn't really
> > have its own one, but a Free Script Editor,
> > right? I mean, its not programmed by the
> > POV-Team, is it?)
>
> You do realized that Cinema4D and Maya as well as the WinPOV GUI are not
> platform independant (both Cinema4D and Maya are available for multiple
> platforms but only through a lot of platform specific work you can bet).
>
> Any 'plugin' feature in POV 4 will probably have much more similarity to
>   POV-Ray 3.5 user defined functions and POVMan shaders than to a plugin
> system you might know from another program.
>
> Christoph
>
> -- 
> POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Sim-POV,
> HCR-Edit and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
> Last updated 2 Sep. 2003 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______
>


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