In article <38e1ec8b$1@news.povray.org>, "Nick Drew" 
<hyp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote:

> Forgive me my ignorance - I use POV in relative isolation from this 
> community (until now), and have never required the use of loops and 
> branches, and so I've never tried to find out if it's possible.  Of 
> course, I use flow control structures in my pov generators.  I guess 
> this reduces the credibility of my discussion somewhat, but hopefully 
> not disastrously.

So you just write a simple little program that outputs POV code whenever 
you need objects created with programming constructs?


> I seem to be implying this but it's quite an emotive statement, so I 
> need to state my position.  I am saying that I'd like to see loops 
> and branches raised out of the scene description language, and be 
> association I'm saying legacy source files with flow control 
> structures should be supported but deprecated.

Why?




So you want it to work in theory, but not in practice? :-)
Have you ever heard of the saying, "If it works, don't fix it!"?
Adding in features or changing the language to be more flexible and 
useable are fine, but chopping out the most popular portions and making 
the rest harder to hand code would be a big mistake in my opinion.
And if it is left in, why deprecate it?


> I think there is a lot to be gained by separating out the separate 
> theoretical constructs, especially when considering POV in 5 years.  
> I feel the best separation is that of declarative vs. procedural.  
> The scene language should be declarative, and programmers should be 
> allowed to choose which ever procedural language they wish to write 
> the declarative part.  I shudder when I hear discussions of what 
> syntax a "loop" construct should take.  Why choose?

Why should POV-Script be declarative and not procedural?
Not everyone who uses these constructs has access to programming tools, 
knowledge, or the patience for creating POV utilities. Even for those 
who do, it is often(usually?) easier and simpler to do it in POV-Script.


> Anyway, I think I'm moving away from my general point - that POV 
> should focus on making advanced rendering techniques available, and 
> use the file format to facilitate this.  I  think the POV team and 
> community should focus not on becoming a more general programming 
> environment, but on better linkage to programming environments.

This has the disadvantages of being more platform dependant, harder to 
distribute "scene files", harder to learn to use, requiring external 
programs to code scenes, and also a lot harder to offer support for. If 
everyone is using their own language, that will break the POV community 
into several different sections. Having just one POV-Script means 
everyone can gain from experience of others and sharing information is 
easier.

-- 
Christopher James Huff - Personal e-mail: chr### [at] yahoocom
TAG(Technical Assistance Group) e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
Web page: http://chrishuff.dhs.org/

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