Ken wrote:

> You say add better language abilities to the program to achieve these
> things. I say improve the program by adding these things to it. I
> think this is the point that Gilles was trying to make. This is the
> vital difference between a programmer mentality and a user mentality.
> Why should I have to learn even more POV-Ray scripting options like
> OO and for() loops when the program is supposed to be doing the
> thinking for me ? The program is supposed to speed up scene development
> and image creation not acting as a programmers development environment.
> Let us not lose sight of this.

Very good points, Ken.

If you look at Terragen or Vue d'Esprit, very realistic cloud effects can be
done
very fast and very effectively. I don't have a clue about how it's done but we
know it's possible. Actually these were just examples of what, as a pov user,
I would *really* need, because my goal is to make images, and not to code them.
Commercial programmes offer many bells and whistles of this kind because
they have a user base that requires them (and pays for them). In fact, all
of the features I quoted are taken for granted in one or another commercial
application, in the programme itself or in its plugins.
You can have a look at the vegetation engine in Vue d'Esprit for another
example.
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Gallery/Day.php3?Index=0

Remember the AWESOME ROLLEX story ? The ocean pic was made with a plugin
for Max/Maya/Lightwave/Softimage. People got very excited because
it looked so great in pov, but, as far as I know, nobody ever got close
to that quality in pov.
You can see the ocean original here http://www.areteis.com/gallery/otw.jpg

I'm not asking for anything, just want to make clear that there are lots of
areas to
investigate for people with programming talent, and many of them have to
do with pov ability to render images. And this, for me would be much more
important that any syntax streamlining.

Most of us can live with a=a+1 instead of a +=1, but sorely miss being able
to render a good sky, or a good ocean, or a good fur,  at an acceptable
coding/computing price.

I'll add something : many aspects of programming that may appear sloppy to
the professional programmer are often very much appreciated by non-programmers.
I don't like to declare variables. I don't like variables having "types". I
don't like
shortcut operators. I may prefer verbose and redundant statements to clean,
streamlined ones if the latter seem obfuscated to me. And generally speaking I
tend to get lost with complex, abstract constructs which may be heaven-sent for
people with powerful brains, but not for me. Why is that ? Because, as a user,
I like to restrict my coding to its scene-oriented questions. I don't want the
code
to be a burden (for instance by multiplying the abstraction levels). I don't
want
obscure messages that will tell me that something was not instanciated (uh?)
or that some class wasn't defined. Even a "type mismatch" error should be
superfluous.
In database management, we know for instance that there is a trade-off between
the conceptual purity of the database design and its usability. We
can get carried away by designing databases that are both formally perfect and
unusable. As I previously said, I think that the very (relative) clumsiness
of the pov syntax is also one reason for its present success in the
non-programming world.

G.



>
> > > And I keep seeing the same tired example. What else can you do with
> > > OO that you can't already do in POV-Ray ? How many of the current
> > > users will be able to understand a scene example from you using OO if
> > > you provided one ? Even other programmers balk at the idea. Shouldn't
> > > the non programmer user also worry ?
> >
> > You can do this in POV-Ray now, true...but it is sloppy and hard to
> > read. It is also prone to producing bugs if you modify the scene later.
> > POV is object oriented now. This would just remove a few limitations on
> > it.
> > And I think that the only reason for a scene example with a hard to
> > understand OO portion would be to demonstrate that hard to understand OO
> > portion. And really, if you are already using POV, you shouldn't have
> > any problem understanding these features.
>
>   This will remain to be seen. I do hope that once a patch is written
> for OO that it is given a fair treatment in the patch community before
> it is added to the official version. I am going to maintain a "wait and
> see" attitude until then.
>
> --
> 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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