Orchid XP v3 wrote:
>> No. I wrote it. I put it up.
> Really?

For real and for true!

> Interesting; I didn't know it was possible to do that...

Why wouldn't it be?

> OK, how about... some instructions? (Or am I just looking at the wrong 
> page?)

Download the package. There are pretty extensive documents describing 
how it works, as well as a sample set of macros and a sample 
several-floors-of-a-castle included.

Note that at the moment, it generates .BAT files to do the tracing 
(since there's apparently no programatic interface to POV's render 
queue). Changing that to output a shell script instead should be pretty 
trivial.

Feedback encouraged!


-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Just because you find out you are
     telepathic, don't let it go to your head.

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Orchid XP v3 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

> "Object oriented programming" is a way of programming where you build
> program objects. Each such object belongs to a particular class and this
> defines what data the object contains and which operations can be
> performed upon it.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming
>

Thanks for the link. I *think* I did take a look at it awhile ago, but
didn't quite understand it. I'll have another go.

Still trying to understand why POV-Ray isn't an OOP; all the comments so far
are quite interesting and helpful, though. Much to absorb and think about.
At some point, I know I'll have that A-HA! moment.

Ken

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>
>   The POV-Ray SDL lacks all 3 of those. (Well, ok, #include files could be
> seen as *very* primitive modules, but just barely.)
>

Yes, I think this is what gave me the (admittedly fuzzy) idea that POV was
comparable to Java or Python; that is, an OOP language.

I'd be interested in your comments on Java.  It *seems* to have some handy
features...like inherent "garbage collection," for instance, that make
programming with it supposedly much easier (than C++, that is.) Especially
easier for someone new to OOP languages, like myself. The POV SDL insulates
me from "all that stuff" too, which is quite nice! (Sorry if I'm showing my
ignorance of the subject; the SDL seems to, anyway.)

Ken

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>> BTW, I was thinking about just inventing my own new SDL language and 
>> writting a program that can convert it to standard POV-Ray SDL. But, 
>> unfortunately, this would of course involve writing a parse, so that 
>> project never really got anywhere...
> 
>   A project like that would be more or less a waste of time.

...so in other words, pretty much like *every* project I start? ;-)

>   A new SDL language should be such that it can be interpreted even
> at render time (in order to create, among other things, shaders).

Well at the moment everybody is focused on finishing the new beta. I'm 
not on the dev team, but I imagine they won't be finished any time soon, 
given the scope of the changes.

Also, as far as I'm aware, making a brand new SDL that breaks all 
existing scenes isn't high up on their priority list either.

Theoretically I could make a patch to the existing POV-Ray source code - 
except that since I can't read C that might be slightly difficult...

So my plan was to write a preprocessor. Obviously it's never going to 
add any new features to POV-ray, but it could make it easier to describe 
scenes algorithmicly.

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> The POV SDL insulates me from "all that stuff" too, which is quite
> nice! (Sorry if I'm showing my ignorance of the subject; the SDL seems
> to, anyway.)

Well, there's no need to handle GC, destructors, or finalizers in SDL
because objects in a scene are created once and then cannot be changed
or destroyed. So there isn't really anything to insulate you from.

-- 
In LaTeX, you \begin{document}.  In Soviet Russia, document \begin{you}!
http://surreal.istic.org/                      It's like a DEATH CIRCUS!

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Kenneth <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> I'd be interested in your comments on Java.  It *seems* to have some handy
> features...like inherent "garbage collection," for instance, that make
> programming with it supposedly much easier (than C++, that is.)

  The POV-Ray SDL doesn't have an explicit "garbage collection" engine
because there is no 'new', no references nor nothing, yet it manages
quite well. In fact, most scripting and programming languages do not
have the kind of "GC" that Java has and they do just fine. GC (as in Java)
is in no way a requirement for safe code.

  You mention GC as if it was some kind of requirement for safe OOP
languages. There's no such connection. It's only necessary for languages
where objects are allocated dynamically and don't go out of scope by
themselves. I'm not even sure *why* Java has such objects. It could
perfectly work without them (just remove 'new' and use internally
some kind of reference-counting copy-on-write system).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>   You mention GC as if it was some kind of requirement for safe OOP
> languages. There's no such connection. It's only necessary for languages
> where objects are allocated dynamically and don't go out of scope by
> themselves. I'm not even sure *why* Java has such objects.

And I'm not sure how you would do a whole bunch of simple things 
*without* such objects.

> It could
> perfectly work without them (just remove 'new' and use internally
> some kind of reference-counting copy-on-write system).

I have no idea why after all these years people still think reference 
counting is a good idea. It's so trivial to find an example where it 
utterly fails...

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>> The POV SDL insulates me from "all that stuff" too, which is quite
>> nice! (Sorry if I'm showing my ignorance of the subject; the SDL seems
>> to, anyway.)
> 
> Well, there's no need to handle GC, destructors, or finalizers in SDL
> because objects in a scene are created once and then cannot be changed
> or destroyed. So there isn't really anything to insulate you from.

Not 100% true. There are situations where you can overwrite stuff 
(mainly to do with variables), but they are all easy to handle. There's 
no need for a whole GC engine just for that.

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Orchid XP v3 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> And I'm not sure how you would do a whole bunch of simple things 
> *without* such objects.

  Exactly like hundreds of programming languages do.

> I have no idea why after all these years people still think reference 
> counting is a good idea. It's so trivial to find an example where it 
> utterly fails...

  Care to give this trivial example?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> > I have no idea why after all these years people still think
> > reference counting is a good idea. It's so trivial to find an
> > example where it utterly fails...
> 
>   Care to give this trivial example?

See the entry 'Moon instructs a student' in:

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html


To answer Andy's question, though:

I have no idea why after all these years people still think quicksort is
a good idea. It's so trivial to find an example where it takes O(n^2)
time.

-- 
In LaTeX, you \begin{document}.  In Soviet Russia, document \begin{you}!
http://surreal.istic.org/      Carry me home, my teacher, carry me home.

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