Christopher James Huff wrote:
> In article <405b66f8@news.povray.org>,
>  David Burnett <var### [at] ntlworldcom> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Functions that can be more than one line. I'm guessing
>>that would be number one on the list.
> 
> 
> Then change functions to allow more complex constructs.

Fine, that we make a number of people happy, and satisfy many needs.
Of course its a lot of work for someone, they would be writing a whole 
language parser by the time people stopped suggesting features.  After 
all I expect to be able to write a version of crackle it this that uses
the checkerboard distance between points. Perhaps it might be better 
just to put a complete parser in.

 > Lua and Python
> would be too slow for most of the things functions are used for anyway.

Its faster for the things that can't be done in functions right now 
though. And if you improve functions, well chances are it would be 
faster for the next thing someone thinks about until someone adds it to 
SDL.


> The POV-Ray scene description language does some pretty specialized 
> things...ever try to describe a scene in another programming language? 
> Gets messy, fast.
> 
I didn't know we there on about replacing SDL, I thought this was about
extending it via a plugin language. Putting that aside and playing 
devil's advocate the only real advantage SDL has is access to run time 
information, everything else is syntactical sugar.

> 
>>Personally I'd love to see parrot used so you could pick
>>from a range of languages.
> 
> 
> None of them being very well suited to the task. I think improving 
> POV-Ray's language would be a better approach.
> 
But much slower to action as there no waiting for a release with the
SDL features you want, or merging unofficial versions until you've got 
one with all the features you want. If no one adds that SDL feature
well tough, learn how to add them to pov yourself.

Adding a plugin language would lower barrier for entry for other 
programmers. They would not need to have the right compiler environment
VC++ or CodeWarrior or be forced to compile a slower version of pov 
because they do not have access to Intel's latest and greatest.
There would also be no dealing with the pov SDL parsing code to add a 
quick new function or object.

Dave

Post a reply to this message