In article <Xns### [at] 204213191226>,
 Jordan <hookflash@_hotmail_.com> wrote:

> I *really* hope the sdl gets completely redone for pov 4.  Imo, an object-
> oriented approach would be much cleaner & prettier.  I would love to see a 
> more powerful sdl (cleaner (no more '{'s and '#'s, for example),

No more '{'s? That would make it much harder to read, not to mention 
more typing. What would you do, replace them with "begin" and "end" 
keywords, like pascal?
I'd eliminate the existing #end keyword, replacing it with {} blocks. 
The "#" character would only be used for "preprocessor" directives.


> user- defined data types,

Just the ability to attach variables and macros to objects should be 
enough here...you could do things like a lens flare "object". If there 
were object references, you could even make a linked list...


> Has anyone considered using an existing scripting language, such as 
> Lua or Python, as the pov sdl?  

These languages aren't really made for scene description...you would 
have to modify them pretty heavily before you got something that looked 
like a scene description language instead of an API.
I've seen Lua before...it looks very interesting. It seems to base 
everything on associative arrays.


> This is *exactly* the sort of thing these langs were designed for.

Not really...

-- 
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom>
POV-Ray TAG e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
TAG web site: http://tag.povray.org/

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