Warp wrote:
> Shay <Sha### [at] cccc> wrote:
> 
>>Best example I've seen yet, and a very compelling, but I'm not sold. 
> 
> 
>   Ok, clearly there's no way to convince you, 
> 
I think that the way to do that is to let him know that he is being 
heard.  Shay is carrying the torch for a number of us, probably, who 
fear that the simplicity of the current SDL may be lost, and fear also 
that overambitious goals may lead to naught.  Though a bit sarcastic at 
times, he has presented some coding cartoons that very accurately 
portray our fears.  Shay, who personally would be perfectly comfortable 
with arcane and cryptic coding patterns, is worried about those who 
would not be.

On your side, it seems, you fear you are also shouting into the wind. 
That no one more than you loves POV for what it is and only seek to 
improve on the thing, and modernize it by some basic organizational 
changes. In a very startling way, the one thing that you and Shay seem 
to agree on is the need for shaders.  I think what you are offering here 
  is further ways that the shader model could be used to improve the POV 
interface.  I acknowledge and trust your advanced knowledge of lowlevel 
programming and how computers work on the more basic levels. Your 
suggestions make common sense to me.  You want support for better data 
stuctures.  That makes common sense to me.  If you ideas would allow the 
more technically talented to add speed and fuctionality for the less 
technical of us to take advantage of,...great.  That has always been one 
of the backbones of this community.

But I also know that people are subject to the fashion of ideas.  As one 
person once said to me, 'the great thing about standards is that there 
are so many to choose from.'  In other words we all fear that the 
organization advantage of a comman standard is the need for some 
personalities to want to control the behavior of others.  And everyone, 
naturally, would prefer a set of gestalts that they are the most 
comfortable with.

This was crystalized for me in another place by Bruno Cabasson's 
illustration of an inheritance scheme.  And I have valued Bruno's 
contributions to his discussion for their clarity, and also his effort 
to illustrate what he means with a syntax example. Because as soon as I 
saw it, I understood its appeal,...but not to me.

So I wonder, Warp, if there might be a way that you could more clearly 
diagram you ideas such that we could see the advantages and fear less 
the idea that we all need to turn into C programmers?

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