In article <82f17usvq6kkpubonvcoq3gbfk9seosh58@4ax.com>,
 W?odzimierz ABX Skiba <abx### [at] babilonorg> wrote:

> useless (but not o-t) philosophical question in free time during rendering:
> 
> What is a spline ?
> Is it an object (becouse of shape)?
> Is it a data type (becouse appear in declarations)?
> Is it a data structure (becouse store points at entries)?
> Is it a programing structure (becouse it is way of declaring function)?
> Is it new alone category ?

A function. You give it an input, you get an output based on that input.
It isn't a shape, it doesn't have a surface, the closest thing is that 
it returns spatially related values. It is a data type in the same way 
that textures and objects are data types, but that's nothing unusual in 
POV...anything that can be declared is a data type. It uses a data 
structure, but it isn't used as one, it isn't intended to store and 
retrieve data like arrays (though I guess you could use it to store 
points if you keep track of the t values).

For the other person: "programmability" is not a requirement for a 
function, only providing a result from a set of parameters. You can't 
reprogram the sin(), cos(), or vlength(), but they are still functions.

-- 
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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