> But how many people are we excluding by obfuscating the SDL?

Who wants to obfuscate the SDL ?  I believe (and hope I'm right)
that its both possible to have a simple SDL, accessible
even to beginners, and to have new extended programming possibilities.
(and 90% backward compatibility, too).  That should be
verified by producing theorical SDL code for simple situations.

> When much of the code in p.text.s-f looks like this:
> MacroName (*Param1, %Param2%$, ....)
> new users will not be willing to commit to learning POV's (among free 
> renderers) "Killer App" (scripting interface).

As I already said, it's all a matter of compromise.  POV-Ray's SDL
won't be a "full featured" OO language like C++ or such.  I imagine*
there would be :
  - no pointers
  - only a few data types (we don't need an "integer" type, for example)
  - no polymorphism or other advanced brainf***ing technique
  - ... ?

(* : Warp, don't jump on this, it's only some vague speculations)

> "Scripting" may mean something different to programmers. but it means 
> something particular to me - something distinct from "Programming." I 
> think POV is best served by a "Scripting Interface."

POV-Ray's current SDL is already a programming language.  There are
loops, conditional, and functional macros.  What is needed is mainly to 
enhance these, for speed (macros are currently darn slow) and
flexibility.  And some object-orientedness won't harm.

Before POV 3.0, POV-Ray was pure scripting.  You had to use an
external proggy to create a spiral.  Imagine that !  When 3.0
and its programming features, though somewhat simplistic, arrived,
a new world opened, just have a look at the images produced before
and after.  When 3.1 introduced macros, another new world opened, 3.1
have been the pinnacle.  Let's open new worlds again !  Let's go higher !

> I've said several times that if it's necessary for shaders, it needs to 
> be included. Modeling *will* be done 99% with outside apps, no matter 
> what is included in the SDL. 

90% of my scenes (well, when I did scenes) were done in SDL.
95% of my meshes were done by an external app (of course), but
there's much more than meshes in a POV-Ray scene.  If CSG could be
instanciated, and if we had more programming power (and speed) within
SDL, we could make images of unprecedented complexity, images that 
couldn't be done with any other app, while not requiring extreme skills.

If you look at Gilles Tran's images, you will see that, except for
pre-made people, cars, and such, everything is done in SDL.

 > A lot lost for very little gained IMO. If a
> non-user read this thread, he might conclude that there are scores of 
> people hand-coding complex scenes in POV or MEL[1], just champing at the 
> bit waiting for the ability to make even more complex scenes this way - 
> this is NOT the case.

Non-users, don't read this, please :-)

Fabien.

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