Charles C wrote:
> PPS, it'd be really cool if POV-Ray had a built in string constant named
> main_pov_file or main_scene_file or primary_sdl_file or something like that
> based on whatever file is the first one parsed.

this may have merit; note it is possible to declare that from an INI file or
command-line if you're rendering that way. that said it could be useful as an
automatic feature. perhaps more useful would be a file-specific boolean that
evaluates to true only if the main file is being parsed (e.g. is false in all
includes). I guess it should probably be true also during execution of any
macro that is called from the main file, even if it's declared elsewhere.

doing this may be tricky, as our symbol table doesn't work that way (it works
on nesting level like most do). if we had this we possibly also could have
SDL equivalents of the C language's __LINE__ and __FILE__ etc. (I suppose
there could also be some argument for predefined constants that tell you
whether or not radiosity is enabled, for example).

I'll leave you guys to toss all this around, be aware that I am not following
closely or reading each post. but I will state for the record that I am
prepared to at least consider changes that are of minimal impact to the
program (i.e. it won't delay 3.7 any further) _if_ those features will make
for a better object/include library /and/ they do not break the internal
design rules (e.g. backend is separate from frontend, parser is part of the
backend, hence frontend things such as display gamma etc don't belong in the
SDL).

-- Chris

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