On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 20:49:27 -0600, Thorsten Froehlich wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> the feature won't appear in an official POV-Ray build, is there any harm
>> in those who are interested discussing the possibilities for an
>> unofficial build?
> 
> It is not up to me or anybody else how others waste their time, 

Again all due respect, but those people considering how to do it may well
not consider it a waste of time.  Your point of view is not the only point
of view.

> you just
> have to face the fact that it will never be added to an official version
> and as such it is a waste of time.  

Well, again, those who are considering what it might take probably don't
consider it a waste of time, but a valuable learning experience,
regardless of whether it is added to the official version or not.  Just
like the post-processing features in MegaPOV probably would never be added
to the official build, yet MegaPOV is quite popular, from what I've seen.

>> And if they managed to pull it off somehow,
> 
> This will not happen.  All you will ever get is some hack.  In fact such a
> hack has existed before in some ancient isosurface code.  The fact that
> nobody supports it any more should tell you something.

That maybe that implementation was sub-optimal.  I personally think it's
foolish to think that something can *never* be accomplished, if everyone
thought that way, we wouldn't have technology to the state it's in now.

>  > isn't there at least the
>> potential that at that time someone from the POV-Ray team might consider
>> it a valuable addition to the existing code?
> 
> No, it is certainly not going to be considered for all he reasons outlined
> so many times in the past and for the millionth time in this thread.

Well, that's your opinion.  I will grant that as you're a member of the
POV-Ray team, your opinion probably counts for more, but again, that's
just one point of view, and there are many others as evidenced by the
amount of discussion this has generated.  Personally, I find it a very
interesting bit of cognitive dissonance to be closed-minded about
something relating to what is for all intents and purposes an open-source
project.

All the time I've worked in the technology field (and that's a
considerable amount of time), the one thing I've learned is never to
assume you know everything about anything, because next week, that can
change.

Jim

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