POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.object-collection : Object Collection rules review : Re: Object Collection rules review Server Time
3 May 2024 21:17:40 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Object Collection rules review  
From: Cousin Ricky
Date: 2 Mar 2023 21:27:15
Message: <64015b03$1@news.povray.org>
I have additional comments on these rules.

On 2023 21:37 (-4), Cousin Ricky wrote:
> 
> LICENSE
> [snip]
>   This file is licensed under the terms of the CC-LGPL
> 
> This exact wording is required by the upload software; you will not be
> allowed to upload your module without it.  The "CC" is due to Creative
> Commons having once provided an online deed for the GNU licenses.

Creative Commons has since removed the deed from their website, and the
link now redirects to gnu.org.  It has been proposed that the "CC" be
removed, but the upload software had not been updated to accept this as
of the time of the crash.

> NAMESPACE COMPLIANCE
> [snip]
> 
>  2. [snip]  Due to namespace scope leakage
>     within POV-Ray, this rule must also apply to #local identifiers and
>     any function formal parameters other than u, v, x, y, and z.
> [snip]
> 
> The modules are currently self-rated by the author.  If the author rates
> their module at compliance level 3, the upload software will reject
> filenames that are out of compliance.  Identifiers are not scanned for
> compliance at this time.

Note that identifier name collisions are possible even with modules
self-rated at level 3.  There was some sort of process for verifying
compliance, the details of which I do not know, but the only modules so
"verified" happen to have been submitted by the administrator
himself--in other words, *none* of the modules can be considered
verified.  As my father once told me, "A priest does not hear his own
confession."

I am very careful about keeping my own contributions level 3 compliant,
yet I have discovered noncompliance in my own code.  To my knowledge, no
one has independently verified my modules, so there could still be some
stray violations.  And I know for a fact that some other contributors
have been less diligent than I.  Caveat emptor.

Add to this, that the scope leakage of #local variables was not
discovered until about 50 modules had already been contributed, so many
of those were rendered de facto non-compliant when the rule was changed.
 Thus far, function formal parameters are not specifically addressed in
the Object Collection rules, but these newsgroups are scattered with
POVers who have been burned by using an identifier that just *happened*
to share a name with a function parameter in some include file.  Caveat
emptor.

LeForgeron's mirror does not record the compliance level of the modules,
but from the information I had collected previously, all of the
contributions were self-rated at level 3 except for the following:
ConvexLens, TextureGen, and TextureGen4.  These 3 modules should *not*
share a directory with other Object Collection downloads.  Two other
modules were once self-rated as non-compliant, but they have since been
edited into full compliance.  All remaining modules are fully filename
compliant, and may share a single directory, even if their identifiers
are not compliant.  All this is to say that you'll probably want to make
your contributions namespace compliant as well.

> CONTENTS OF SDL FILES
> ---------------------
> As of the time of the crash, the upload software allowed only 7-bit
> ASCII characters in .inc and .pov files.

I hope this will change.


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