In article <38CA2128.BD294B07@pacbell.net>, lin### [at] povrayorg 
wrote:

> Here I will definitely agree with you. I would like to see procedural
> features added that ease the creation of scene building without having
> to resort to adding difficulty to the language itself. If you look at
> the wealth of plug-ins available for 3DS Max you will see that they
> offer some powerful features, that are easy to use, and the functions
> that make them work are transparent to the user. The question that
> needs to be asked is if the program exists for programmers or if it
> exists for users who don't care how it works so long as it does.

I am not sure if some of these things, like cloud objects, fur, trees, 
etc, would be a good language feature. It would be faster parsing, but 
that is about it. It would be more difficult to modify, if you want to 
customize it you would have to become a patch programmer. These seem 
like things best taken care of by include files and macros.
Now, something like an L-system object would be a different matter...it 
would still be quite flexible but would also parse much faster and 
probably consume less memory. The syntax would be a little hard to 
define, but the results would be worth it. And maybe a couple 
specialized patterns for making types of clouds and smoke with 
media...and maybe a partice system object.


> Good point(s). What I also fear is that if the programming language
> is extended in POV-Ray to include OO programming, for () loops, and
> all of the other programming suggestions that have been addressed
> in this thread, is what is going to happen when some non programming
> literate POV-User comes to the news groups seeking help and some
> programmer type gives them an example in the form of these new
> features ? The programmer types (and there a lot of them here in the
> groups that answer questions on a regular basis) will quickly adopt
> the attitude that everyone thinks like them and give examples in
> their language style of choice, while the real truth of the matter
> is that they could express themselves in a way that the people
> seeking help will not understand a word they are saying.

Do you really think the #for() loop would be harder to understand than a 
#while() loop? I think it would be easier to understand, at least, I 
found it easiest to understand and use when I was learning programming. 
(in Tandy and Commodore BASIC, yuck)
And why all the paranoia about object-oriented features? What does a POV 
script do? It manipulates *objects*. The object oriented features would 
only make this simpler. 500 pages? Try 5 pages, for the in depth 
description including examples. I'm not talking about inheritance, that 
wouldn't be necessary. I'm talking about the ability to have objects 
have accessible data(like MyCamera.location) and to attach variables and 
macros to objects.


> I would probably not use the new version if it became to hard to
> learn. This would restrict me to using the older versions of the
> program and I would miss out on new features.

Few of the feature requests I have seen would cause problems with 
backward compatability...

-- 
Chris Huff
e-mail: chr### [at] yahoocom
Web page: http://chrishuff.dhs.org/

Post a reply to this message