Hi there. Long time no see. As far I can see, development has stalled since aug
2021. Can someone update me briefly ? Is Christoph (Lipka) still with us ?

Regards

Bruno.

Post a reply to this message

On 2/24/22 18:33, Bruno Cabasson wrote:
> Hi there. Long time no see. As far I can see, development has stalled since aug
> 2021. Can someone update me briefly ? Is Christoph (Lipka) still with us ?
> 
> Regards
> 
> Bruno.
> 

Hi,

I see POV-Ray as 'alive' so long as people use it and are creating new 
code for 'this and that'.

As for official v3.7/v3.8/v4.0 support and development, I see what you 
see. It's been quiet since mid 2021.

Aside: I found myself using your elliptic_torus code again last fall! :-)

Bill P.

Post a reply to this message

William F Pokorny <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> On 2/24/22 18:33, Bruno Cabasson wrote:
> > Hi there. Long time no see. As far I can see, development has stalled since aug
> > 2021. Can someone update me briefly ? Is Christoph (Lipka) still with us ?
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Bruno.
> >
>
> Hi,
>
> I see POV-Ray as 'alive' so long as people use it and are creating new
> code for 'this and that'.
>
> As for official v3.7/v3.8/v4.0 support and development, I see what you
> see. It's been quiet since mid 2021.
>
> Aside: I found myself using your elliptic_torus code again last fall! :-)
>
> Bill P.

Thanks for the update! But what about Christoph? Glad you use some of my code,
though I absolutely do not remember what it is about !!! Lol!

I was wondering about POV's health and about Christoph because I recently find
myself with some fee time. I decided to get back to POVing, just like that. And
I saw the situation.

HOWEVER, and despite that situation, the dictionary container gave me the idea
that it could be possible to imagine using them for classes, instances and some
fundamental Object Oriented features. I think that if it happens to be feasible
and if it happens to be usable without syntactic over-complexity or
non-readabiliy, I could be open the object-orientedness for POV-Sdl. It could
help for complex scenes, animation, whatever an object-oriented language is
handy (or necessary).

So, I had it a try.

AND I reached something quite fine (though it is just a Proof Of Concept until
now)...
I could implement :
    classes,
    instances,
    properties,
    methods,
    inheritance,
    overloading for contructors and methods,
    named parameters,
    new(), super(), instanceof() operators,
    type-ckecking,
    templates,
    and a few other minor OO features.

Do you think it could be interesting for the POV community ? For fun, I named it
PROOF (Pov Ray Object Oriented Features).

Bruno

Post a reply to this message

"Bruno Cabasson" <bru### [at] cabassoncom> wrote:
> William F Pokorny <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> > On 2/24/22 18:33, Bruno Cabasson wrote:
> > > Hi there. Long time no see. As far I can see, development has stalled since aug
> > > 2021. Can someone update me briefly ? Is Christoph (Lipka) still with us ?
> > >
> > > Regards
> > >
> > > Bruno.
> > >
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I see POV-Ray as 'alive' so long as people use it and are creating new
> > code for 'this and that'.
> >
> > As for official v3.7/v3.8/v4.0 support and development, I see what you
> > see. It's been quiet since mid 2021.
> >
> > Aside: I found myself using your elliptic_torus code again last fall! :-)
> >
> > Bill P.
>
> Thanks for the update! But what about Christoph? Glad you use some of my code,
> though I absolutely do not remember what it is about !!! Lol!
>
> I was wondering about POV's health and about Christoph because I recently find
> myself with some fee time. I decided to get back to POVing, just like that. And
> I saw the situation.
>
> HOWEVER, and despite that situation, the dictionary container gave me the idea
> that it could be possible to imagine using them for classes, instances and some
> fundamental Object Oriented features. I think that if it happens to be feasible
> and if it happens to be usable without syntactic over-complexity or
> non-readabiliy, I could be open the object-orientedness for POV-Sdl. It could
> help for complex scenes, animation, whatever an object-oriented language is
> handy (or necessary).
>
> So, I had it a try.
>
> AND I reached something quite fine (though it is just a Proof Of Concept until
> now)...
> I could implement :
>     classes,
>     instances,
>     properties,
>     methods,
>     inheritance,
>     overloading for contructors and methods,
>     named parameters,
>     new(), super(), instanceof() operators,
>     type-ckecking,
>     templates,
>     and a few other minor OO features.
>
> Do you think it could be interesting for the POV community ? For fun, I named it
> PROOF (Pov Ray Object Oriented Features).
>
> Bruno

I googled for the elliptical-torus thing. I rewinded back to 2006 !!!! It is
soooooo long ago ! But it is a decent piece of code. I hope it is still
meaningful.

Bruno

Post a reply to this message

On 2022-02-26 05:31 (-4), William F Pokorny wrote:
> On 2/24/22 18:33, Bruno Cabasson wrote:
>> Hi there. [snip]
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Aside: I found myself using your elliptic_torus code again last fall! :-)

What!?  Where?

Post a reply to this message

On 2/26/22 05:37, Bruno Cabasson wrote:
> Thanks for the update! But what about Christoph? 

He's not been recently active is all I know.

> 
...
> 
> HOWEVER, and despite that situation, the dictionary container gave me the idea
> that it could be possible to imagine using them for classes, instances and some
> fundamental Object Oriented features. I think that if it happens to be feasible
> and if it happens to be usable without syntactic over-complexity or
> non-readabiliy, I could be open the object-orientedness for POV-Sdl. It could
> help for complex scenes, animation, whatever an object-oriented language is
> handy (or necessary).
> 
> So, I had it a try.
> 
> AND I reached something quite fine (though it is just a Proof Of Concept until
> now)...
> I could implement :
>      classes,
>      instances,
>      properties,
>      methods,
>      inheritance,
>      overloading for contructors and methods,
>      named parameters,
>      new(), super(), instanceof() operators,
>      type-ckecking,
>      templates,
>      and a few other minor OO features.
> 
> Do you think it could be interesting for the POV community ? For fun, I named it
> PROOF (Pov Ray Object Oriented Features).

I like the acronym. :-)

Certainly of interest, especially, as a way to flesh out ideas for a 
potential v4.0 SDL concepts/syntax.

Ingo and jr in particular have been pushing ideas using the dictionary 
feature of v3.8/v4.0 over the pass 3-4 years. I also picked up TOK's 
newer dictionary based array statistics code as a stand alone 
arraystatistics.inc in my povr fork.

---
Practically, you might come up against issues.

Being based atop current parsers, performance a concern. As 'proof' of 
concept code this will matter less.

To be sure you are aware. In 2018 and early 2019 Christoph was 
significantly changing the internals of the - then v3.8 - parser. At 
that point all development stalled for roughly 2 years starting in early 
2019 until Christoph resumed working on POV-Ray for some months in 2021. 


On his return in 2021 he broke development into a v3.8 release path 
where he backed out code he considered to be too new for a near term 
v3.8 release. This included backing up the parser code to an earlier 
v3.8 state. The newest parser code still exists in the master branch 
which is now more or less aimed at v4.0. Both parser versions are - 
today - SDL / language feature equivalent (excepting a few fringe cases).

However, last I knew, there were remaining parser issues in both 
implementations. IIRC there is at least one dictionary issue still in 
v3.8 fixed in v4.0.

My personal povr branch is based on the newer (v4.0) version of the 
parser code which 'was' in v3.8 when I forked off the povr work. I 
'believe' all the v4.0 parser 'bugs' of which I am aware have been 
addressed in the povr branch. In aspects the parser in povr has evolved 
into another 'internal' parser implementation - though again the SDL 
feature set is substantially v3.8/v4.0 equivalent today.

New v4.0 SDL concepts/syntax and radical changes to the parser are not a 
presently a focus for me as I play with POV-Ray. I end up in the parser 
code when something needs to be understood / fixed - or it's otherwise 
in my way.

---
Aside: Our existing scene description language (SDL) - as a language - 
supports certain object oriented 'concepts' today. Our implementation 
doesn't back them in a consistent way and so people tend to avoid the 
approach. The situation due internal coding choices and, often as not, 
bugs.

For example, something like the following is supposed to work in POV-Ray 
today with fog, but it doesn't(1). The internal structure and code is 
all there - but for bugs.

(1) - You can write similar parser clean code, but in the rendering 
details it very often isn't working.

Using the povr fog example (povr's fog and related keywords somewhat 
different) and today's SDL:

//...
#declare Fog01 = fog {
     type 1
     distance 9.5
     color Grey70
}
#declare Fog01_wTurb = fog {
     Fog01
     it_scale <1.6,0.16,1.6>
     it_depth 2.1
     it_octaves 5
     it_omega 0.35
     it_lambda 1.25
}
#declare Fog01_neg_it_depth = fog {
     Fog01_wTurb
     it_depth -2.1
}
#declare Fog01_blend_gamma = fog {
     Fog01_wTurb
     blend_gamma 2
}
#declare Fog01_inverse = fog {
     Fog01_wTurb
     inverse
}
#declare Fog01_range = fog {
     Fog01_wTurb
     range 7, 20
     blend_gamma 2
}
#declare Fog03_rotate = fog {
     Fog01_inverse
     type 3
     rotate z*45
}
//...

Bill P.

Post a reply to this message

On 2/26/22 12:02, Cousin Ricky wrote:
> On 2022-02-26 05:31 (-4), William F Pokorny wrote:
>> On 2/24/22 18:33, Bruno Cabasson wrote:
>>> Hi there. [snip]
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> Aside: I found myself using your elliptic_torus code again last fall! :-)
> 
> What!?  Where?

:-) This isn't what you want, though it was created during an earlier 
attempt at what you want.

(This code torus via sphere_sweep, and a blob ~equivalent sphere sweep)

Bill P.

Post a reply to this message

William F Pokorny <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> On 2/26/22 05:37, Bruno Cabasson wrote:
> > Thanks for the update! But what about Christoph?
>
> He's not been recently active is all I know.
>
> >
> ...
> >
> > HOWEVER, and despite that situation, the dictionary container gave me the idea
> > that it could be possible to imagine using them for classes, instances and some
> > fundamental Object Oriented features. I think that if it happens to be feasible
> > and if it happens to be usable without syntactic over-complexity or
> > non-readabiliy, I could be open the object-orientedness for POV-Sdl. It could
> > help for complex scenes, animation, whatever an object-oriented language is
> > handy (or necessary).
> >
> > So, I had it a try.
> >
> > AND I reached something quite fine (though it is just a Proof Of Concept until
> > now)...
> > I could implement :
> >      classes,
> >      instances,
> >      properties,
> >      methods,
> >      inheritance,
> >      overloading for contructors and methods,
> >      named parameters,
> >      new(), super(), instanceof() operators,
> >      type-ckecking,
> >      templates,
> >      and a few other minor OO features.
> >
> > Do you think it could be interesting for the POV community ? For fun, I named it
> > PROOF (Pov Ray Object Oriented Features).
>
> I like the acronym. :-)
>
> Certainly of interest, especially, as a way to flesh out ideas for a
> potential v4.0 SDL concepts/syntax.
>
> Ingo and jr in particular have been pushing ideas using the dictionary
> feature of v3.8/v4.0 over the pass 3-4 years. I also picked up TOK's
> newer dictionary based array statistics code as a stand alone
> arraystatistics.inc in my povr fork.
>
> ---
> Practically, you might come up against issues.
>
> Being based atop current parsers, performance a concern. As 'proof' of
> concept code this will matter less.
>
> To be sure you are aware. In 2018 and early 2019 Christoph was
> significantly changing the internals of the - then v3.8 - parser. At
> that point all development stalled for roughly 2 years starting in early
> 2019 until Christoph resumed working on POV-Ray for some months in 2021.
>
>
> On his return in 2021 he broke development into a v3.8 release path
> where he backed out code he considered to be too new for a near term
> v3.8 release. This included backing up the parser code to an earlier
> v3.8 state. The newest parser code still exists in the master branch
> which is now more or less aimed at v4.0. Both parser versions are -
> today - SDL / language feature equivalent (excepting a few fringe cases).
>
> However, last I knew, there were remaining parser issues in both
> implementations. IIRC there is at least one dictionary issue still in
> v3.8 fixed in v4.0.
>
> My personal povr branch is based on the newer (v4.0) version of the
> parser code which 'was' in v3.8 when I forked off the povr work. I
> 'believe' all the v4.0 parser 'bugs' of which I am aware have been
> addressed in the povr branch. In aspects the parser in povr has evolved
> into another 'internal' parser implementation - though again the SDL
> feature set is substantially v3.8/v4.0 equivalent today.
>
> New v4.0 SDL concepts/syntax and radical changes to the parser are not a
> presently a focus for me as I play with POV-Ray. I end up in the parser
> code when something needs to be understood / fixed - or it's otherwise
> in my way.
>
> ---
> Aside: Our existing scene description language (SDL) - as a language -
> supports certain object oriented 'concepts' today. Our implementation
> doesn't back them in a consistent way and so people tend to avoid the
> approach. The situation due internal coding choices and, often as not,
> bugs.
>
> For example, something like the following is supposed to work in POV-Ray
> today with fog, but it doesn't(1). The internal structure and code is
> all there - but for bugs.
>
> (1) - You can write similar parser clean code, but in the rendering
> details it very often isn't working.
>
> Using the povr fog example (povr's fog and related keywords somewhat
> different) and today's SDL:
>
> //...
> #declare Fog01 = fog {
>      type 1
>      distance 9.5
>      color Grey70
> }
> #declare Fog01_wTurb = fog {
>      Fog01
>      it_scale <1.6,0.16,1.6>
>      it_depth 2.1
>      it_octaves 5
>      it_omega 0.35
>      it_lambda 1.25
> }
> #declare Fog01_neg_it_depth = fog {
>      Fog01_wTurb
>      it_depth -2.1
> }
> #declare Fog01_blend_gamma = fog {
>      Fog01_wTurb
>      blend_gamma 2
> }
> #declare Fog01_inverse = fog {
>      Fog01_wTurb
>      inverse
> }
> #declare Fog01_range = fog {
>      Fog01_wTurb
>      range 7, 20
>      blend_gamma 2
> }
> #declare Fog03_rotate = fog {
>      Fog01_inverse
>      type 3
>      rotate z*45
> }
> //...
>
> Bill P.

Thanks for the update! I'll have a closer look to your povr fork (on github?).
But I still would like news from Christoph...

Let me talk a bit more about PROOF (object oriented layer over POV-Ray Sdl) in
'programming' thread.

PS : In the first place, I named it SLOPE : Syntactic Layer Over Povray and
Extensions...).

Bruno

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On 2/27/22 04:34, Bruno Cabasson wrote:
> Thanks for the update! I'll have a closer look to your povr fork (on github?).

It is locally under git code control, but thus far, it's been published 
a few times a year here as a small tarball - a code contribution to 
'POV-Ray.' I'm working toward another tarball in March. The povr branch 
is unix/linux/osx only and ever drifting away from POV-Ray proper in 
functionality and behavior.

I mentioned it because the source code contains many hundreds of fixes 
and changes which can be applied to the POV-Ray code base in some 
fashion - including the parser(s). If you do get hung up on a parser 
bug, you might find a fix or work around for it already in the most 
recent tarball of povr code. I also try and publish information about 
common problems and fixes found while playing with povr here on the 
newsgroups or on github.

If you are after mainstream users, I think you should stick with POV-Ray 
proper. Any official resumption in development won't come from me.

Be cognizant too the dictionary feature is new to v3.8, which has not 
been officially released. This means V3.8 is not the version most active 
users run. For example, anyone on a common linux distribution installing 
via a standard POV-Ray package is getting v3.7.

Bill P.

Post a reply to this message

Hi(gh)!

On 25.02.22 00:33, Bruno Cabasson wrote:

> Hi there. Long time no see. As far I can see, development has stalled since aug
> 2021. Can someone update me briefly ? Is Christoph (Lipka) still with us ?

As long until a Russian mid-range nuclear missile vaporizes Cologne...

I don't think POV-Ray would survive World War III!

See you in Khyberspace!

Yadgar

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