Well, some sort of CV type system (CVS, monotone, Subversion, etc) could 
handle the browsing / downloads, with daily tarballs or zips available 
for everyone who wants them.

As for directories / categories / whatever you want to call them, I'd 
keep them extremely abstract and general.  I'd also recommend forcing a 
separation between various component types at the top level.  So, the 
directory tree might look something like this:

- Textures
-- Pigments
-- Finishes
-- Normals
- Interiors
-- Media
- Shapes
--Solid (CSG-able)
--Non-solid (Non-CSG-able)
- Functions
-- Isosurface
-- Positioning
-- Other

This system isn't meant to be browsed by hand; you'd search through it 
via the server to find what you need.  Since I'm spending quite a bit of 
time these days trying to clean up my mp3 collection, I've got a few 
thoughts about tags: everything would have a variable number of tags, 
and the tags may be whatever the author wishes.

Rather than forcing an arbitrary categorization with set tags (with MP3s 
these are Author, Album, Genre, etc), each tag would simply be a tag, 
with no category.  Tek's Sea would have the tags "Tek", "Sea", "Ocean", 
"Isosurface", "Realistic" etc.

To find any files which might be useful, you'd run a search on the 
server for the tags you want.  It would be especially useful if POV-Ray 
accepted URIs to files, and you wouldn't have to download them locally 
to check them out... but that could open a whole new can of worms :)

...Chambers

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