Well, I'm home, here's the rest...

Let me tell something about an app that I use daily.

AutoCAD provides several ways to being programmed
and controlled by other programs.  It has libraries
which exposes almost all of its functionalities.

At the lowest level, it's something called "ObjectARX",
which allows even the creation of new kind of objects,
and fully automated control rom another app.  But it
requires the use of C++ or similar languages (using
it with C++ is documented, but there are people who
use delphi...)

At a slightly higher level, there are ActiveX controls,
which exposes less, but still allows most (except
the deepest ones) manipulations over the drawing's
database.

You can control it with anything that can control ActiveX,
but there are mainly two languages that are provided
and used to do this : good old LISP, which has been
extended to allow ActiveX calls, and VBA (which does
that naturally).  Both have their pro and cons, but
are quite user friendly and allow both quick and simple
programs, and much more sophisticated stuff.

So, there is both an abstraction between the core and
and the highest level languages, while these languages
aren't that hard to learn for the end user (and there's
even a legacy one).

I simplified things a little, and, in fact, AutoCAD, being
20+ years old, is becoming a huge mess of piled stuff, especially
with their obsession of relea$ing a new one each f****** year.

Nevertheless, it's still a good example of an open architecture.

POV-Ray, which have the chance of being rewritten (most) entirely
would greatly benefit from that kind of openness, without sacrifying
ease AND power of a dedicated (new, enhanced) SDL.

BTW, someone talked about Flash ActionScript, I think that,
as part of these discussions, analysing how other apps does is
absolutely required.

Now, at this point of discussion, please note that

1) while I am not a total novice in programming and computing in
general, I am not an expert either, and expressing some high-end
programming concepts becomes difficult to do well in a conversation
with professionnal (or so) programmers.

2) this group is not the ideal space for such discussions, we would
really benefit of something where thematic discussions (general 
architecture,
rendering, SDL(s), effects, materials, objects...) could take place.
We should beat it while it's hot.

Fabien.

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