Am 30.05.2010 21:49, schrieb Warp:

>    That suggestion is just crazy. Naturally the correct solution is to remove
> the name collisions by *not* dumping everything to the global namespace.
> Every C++ programmer who is even fairly competent knows this.

(If you're such a good C++ programmer, then I guess you're welcome to 
(once again) get your hands dirty with helping and improving the 
oh-so-bad codebase of POV-Ray... but of course the critic's position is 
a far easier one than the - If I may say so - artist's.)


My personal opinion in this dispute, if I may point the perspective back 
to the technical side, is that since the boost project has always (or at 
least so it appears to me) aimed at setting new standards and embraced 
the adoption of their concepts into future C++ standards, it would be 
prudent to /expect/ that identifiers currently in the boost:: namespace 
/may/ make their way into the std:: namespace sooner or later, 
/possibly/ without being renamed by the standardization body.

I think a reasonable way to achieve this would be to drop the "using 
namespace boost;" and replace it with either explicit namespace 
prefixes, or - which I'd personally favor - individual "using 
boost::whatever" statements to pull only the identifiers into global 
namespace that are actually used.

I personally reject both the notion that the current POV-Ray code is 
"bad" and therefore /must/ be changed, nor the contrary position that 
only MS Visial C++ 2010 is "bad" by implementing a non-finalized 
standard, and therefore the POV-Ray code /must not/ be changed.

Fact is, as of today, the POV-Ray code /can/ be changed to be perfectly 
compatible with all of (a) the current C++ standard, (b) Microsoft's 
VC++ 2010 implementation and (c) whatever the future C++ standard may be 
- so I'd say this trouble report would be a good occasion to just go 
ahead and make it so.

(... engage Warp drives, Mr. Data...)

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