> However, it has always been stressed that povray -- like Renderman, Mental
> Ray and other renderers -- deals exclusively with the rendering process.

That's a fundamental misconception.  POV-Ray ISN'T a "renderer".
POV-Ray is, and has alwas been, a "rendering system", complete out of 
the box, with the ability to generate scenes through a scripting
system (until POV 2.2), then a more complete SDL (from POV 3).

With Mental Ray, you can't do that, you need a modeler with an interface 
to control it.

Even with Renderman, you can't created decent scenes with a text file,
it totally lacks any feature that would allow text-based modelling.

POV-Ray allows you to do that, not as a side-effect of the SDL, but
precisely BY DESIGN.  Drop that, and you kill POV-Ray (there are
already many nice and free pure renderers out there).

> It was never supposed to be a modeller, yet efforts like yours and many
(snip)

It always had a modelling system, albeit not a graphical one.  CSG,
loops, macros... are there to allow modelling tasks.

> others are only proof to the great strength and flexibility of povray's
> SDL.  And a SDL is a good thing even if regulars users don't use it.

Fabien.

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