"Johannes Hubert" <jht### [at] mailacom> wrote in message
news:38ca2192@news.povray.org...
| Example: The fact that many keywords begin with a "#". This is a typical
| sign for that the person who designed the initial language and parser
| did not really know too much about parsers (I hope I am not stepping on
| too many toes here, because I am speculating...) The "#" makes the
| keywords easier to find for the parser, an approach intuitive for many
| people who are confronted with writing a parser for the first time and
| don't know better. However, parser technology has for a long time been
| very advanced, and there is really no need for such "crutches" to make
| parsing easier.

I had to wonder about your viewpoint on this for a moment but my sentiments lean
toward the hashmark (#) as being one of the things that shows the person, not
the parser alone (however that works), where each of those special keywords are.
In fact they tend to be of prime importance so it's very good to know where they
are located.  Something you can do a search for easily too and can find all, not
just one, of the pertinent keywords.
This fact leads me to believe it might be good to have more such referencing
symbols for particular actions.  At least that's one way to look at it.  I think
I might get lost in a pov script having no special symbols, it can be such a
visual cue.
Anyway, I agree with Ken's remarks about the programmer/non-programmer thing a
lot.  But what may be getting overlooked is how POV has a programmer language of
sorts simply by being what it is: textual interface.  The continuance of that
into more features isn't the issue I'm sure, it's the syntax that is the hub of
this discussion.  By that reasoning it should not ever be a hard-core
programming language, instead it should always be a common vocabulary most of
all.

Bob

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