I don't want to get into an argument with povray's father, but...

David Buck wrote:
> POV-Ray should be a small simple engine to render user-defined shapes 
> with user-defined textures and user-defined light sources.  To make them 
> user defined, you have to push them from the cryptic and inaccessible C 
> source into the SDL.

but aren't functions already available for user-defined shapes and 
textures?  Aren't isosurfaces slower to calculate than the quadratic 
primitives?  Isn't SDL parsing time an aditional problem?

> Less is more - take advantage of that.

yes, but optimized solutions are good too.  C is very good at that. 
Besides, all renderers I know of offer the quadratic geometric 
primitives for granted, including Renderman.

I see no reason why user-defined and slower shapes, textures or shaders 
should take precedence over well-known and optimized builtin techniques 
for rendering quadratics, phong shading and company...

certainly, it'd be cool to have user-defined shaders, but also keep with 
the oldies and fasties...

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