>> Highlights as POV-Ray defines them is a sort of short cut.
>
> Right. This is basically what I thought. ;-)
>
> Doesn't that mean that, in the real world, the hilights should be the 
> shape of whatever luminous object is creating them? (The real world 
> doesn't have point-lights.)

Yes, if your surface was perfectly smooth.  But IRL most surfaces are not, 
they have a roughness even if it is at a very small scale, thus the "normal" 
you use in the reflection equation is perturbed slightly which can make the 
highlight look larger and more blurred than it would due to a straight 
reflection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_highlight

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