Greetings,

  As we all know the language used by POV-Ray is not only easy to use
but offers a lot of flexibility. There are often many ways to describe
an object or attribute of an object because of the "looseness" of
it's language.

 Now many in the past have argued that it is too primitive for thier
needs and suggest that it become more of an official programming
language. They also suggest it should become more object oriented
or stricter rules should be applied to the language from what it is
now. Some say the syntax is too loose for all practical purposes.
Some even suggest it should move to a binary format that needs to
be compiled before being parsed (heaven forbid).

 I say the one thing that attracted me to POV-Ray was the fact that
it's text based input was both easy to learn, was intuitive from the
beginning, and I never had to learn a programmers language to use
the program. I like the way that you can describe something in several
ways to achieve the same results. In my opinion this loose and very
flexible language makes it a very powerful program to use.

 What I do worry about though is the influence that the people who seek
a more programmer like language may have for the mass of people that have
no programming background but still enjoy using the program. It might
be good for them in some circumstances but would it be good for everyone
is not so cut and dried as it were.


So the questions I have are really for the non-programmer types out there.

Would you have difficulty re-learning POV-Ray if it's language format
changed ?

Would you resent it or maybe even quit using the program completely ?



P.S. I am not suggesting that the POV-Team is even considering changing
     the language at this time. I am mearly trying to find out what the
     mainstream users of the program think about this and if they really
     like the way the syntax is currently structured.


-- 
Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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