Mitchell Waite wrote:
> 
> [...]
> I want to improve the tutorials, not compete with them. I
> think that the tutorials in the POV Ray and Moray docs are very uneven, some
> are great, some are okay, and some are poor.

Could you give an example?  Of course the tutorials in the POV-Ray docs
have their limitations.  There is not room for a lot of illustartions and
they have to be quite technical, but i would not call any of them 'poor'.

> I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
> power without learning the scene description language"? How is that true?
> "And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these modelers
> yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in these
> modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
> that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.

I think Gilles' suggestion to get some more experience in the practical
use of POV-Ray is very good.  Tell me if i'm wrong, but your above
statement seems to indicate that you are missing some of the most powerful
features of POV-Ray.  A book about current POV-Ray without while loops,
macros, 'trace' etc. would be really incomplete i think.

> "Furthermore the structure of a book about Moray would should be quite
> different from one about Povray." I don't see how this follows. Why would
> they have to have different structures? Seems like "here is how to do
> something in POV" could easily be parallel with "here is how its done in
> Moray", or whatever modeler you are using.

Things like the mentioned functions have no equivalent in a modeler like
moray, apart from that the introducing part would have to be totally
different.  With moray you would give an introduction to the user
interface, the basic functions and how to use the wireframe editor in
general.  With POV-Ray you would probably start with some explanation of
the language, the basic syntax elements etc.

My own favorite concept for such a book would be a collection of
independent chapters.  I always liked such books because they give a good
impression of the diversity of possible ways to work and do not force a
certain learning path.  Also it would simplify coordinating multiple
authors.  I personally would also like writing something for such a book
while i would not have that much interest in doing a chapter of a book
like you proposed - with moray i would even not be competent for doing so.

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

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