Am 12.12.2015 um 13:27 schrieb clipka:
> Am 12.12.2015 um 09:32 schrieb Le_Forgeron:
> 
>> [cutting the very good list of expectations]
>>
>> Just beware of the NIH syndrome.
> 
> There's really nothing to beware there; if I could find a language out
> there that does suit POV-Ray's needs, I'd probably be the first to go
> for it; if nothing else, it would save us all the work of defining the
> new SDL in the first place; a pre-existing parser to just plug into
> POV-Ray would save a lot of work, too.

I /think/ I've found a language that might be suitable; at any rate, it...

(1) shares the design goal of providing both declarative and procedural
elements;

(2) has native support for /all/ of the domain-specific basic types we
would need (most notably vectors and colours);

(3) already covers a major subset of POV-Ray's language domain; and

(4) is already established, /specifically/ in the domain of 3D rendering.


Have a look at NVIDIA's Material Definition Language (MDL):

http://www.nvidia-arc.com/fileadmin/user_upload/iray_documentation/nvidia_mdl_introduction.140512.A4.pdf

http://www.nvidia-arc.com/fileadmin/user_upload/MDL_spec_1.2.2_28Apr2015.pdf

I think all we'd have to do is provide some intrinsic data types for
geometric shapes and some odds & ends (such as light sources, global
settings, etc.), and we'd have a useful Scene Description Language.

Is it pretty to use? Don't know yet.

Can we get Nvidia's implementation for free? Don't know yet, but I'd
doubt it. The language specs are open though, so we could write our own
parser.

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