In article <3db45a23@news.povray.org>, "Slime" <slm### [at] slimelandcom> 
wrote:

> Hmm, I like some of these things you propose, and I don't like some of them.

I'm not surprised. :-)


> You seem to want to bypass the noise_generator keyword altogether.

No, look at the later examples. The noise_generator keyword is used to 
set the noise generator for patterns (and potentially other noise-using 
things). It just seemed kind of redundant to use it for every kind of 
noise generator functions.


> Notice how noise generators are an object that can be declared like any
> other, and passed as macro parameters, etc. On a related note, anyone
> interested in making fun of me may want to read my last night's blog entry
> about the implementation of this ( http://www.slimeland.com/ ).

My first syntax idea had the outer "function {}" block eliminated, which 
would be very similar to that. It fits in with the other special 
functions more this way.
Neither version has more capabilities, just the amount of typing.


> Well, the way the noise generator code works now, the random values are
> predetermined when POV-Ray starts up. This makes things a lot faster than if
> they were being calculated on the fly: they're merely pulled out of an
> array. So I don't think specifying an alternate seed is really a good
> option... unless perhaps it were done via a command line parameter or
> something...

The values would be calculated when the noise generator was created, it 
wouldn't slow anything down but parsing, and that wouldn't take long. 
I've done this in my own tracer, and it works fine.


> Anyway, to be honest, my patch was originally just going to be a couple of
> bugfixes so that I could do something that POV-Ray's limitations were
> preventing me from doing. Now that I've fixed the bugs and made a couple
> workarounds, I'm anxious to finish the patch and get back to regular POVing.
> Maybe you'll want to download my source code when I release it.

Alright.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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