"Ken" <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote :
>
> Would you have difficulty re-learning POV-Ray if it's language format
> changed ?

    That, of course, depends on what it is changed to...

>
> Would you resent it or maybe even quit using the program completely ?
>

    I wouldn't resent it, but if it was just a little hard to re-learn, I
have a couple of commercial programs laying around that I just need a good
excuse to learn.

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"Chris Huff" <chr### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message
news:chrishuff_99-6AAACE.17450909032000@news.povray.org...
|
| Umm, maybe you haven't noticed, but POV is available for many different
| platforms. Many people don't use the built in editor, and some versions
| don't have one.

Please excuse my momentary lapse into exuberance while I say: heck with that,
how about auto-completion of keywords in the CodeMax editor!  Wouldn't that be a
nifty item to add?
That said, I'm settling back down now.

Bob

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I agree with most of the people; keep the current stuff the way it is, but add
some more programming features.
#for (I=1,I<5,I=I+1) #end
instead of
#declare I=1; #while(I<5) #declare I=I+1; #end
some people showed examples like #for {}, but I think it would be better to
keep the #end statement as it is how it's been done so far, but also, because
the syntax and syntax coloring is very helpful in sorting out parser code from
object code.

--
___     _______________________________________________
 | \     |_          <dav### [at] faricynet> <ICQ 55354965>
 |_/avid |ontaine        http://www.faricy.net/~davidf/

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." -Dali

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In article <38c83b93@news.povray.org>, "Bob Hughes" 
<per### [at] aolcom?subject=PoV-News:> wrote:

> Please excuse my momentary lapse into exuberance while I say: heck 
> with that, how about auto-completion of keywords in the CodeMax 
> editor!  Wouldn't that be a nifty item to add?

That would be a nice option for the Mac version too, which I believe 
uses the WASTE text engine. This capability might be built in to the 
WASTE engine already...

Still, my first point was a platform specific editor feature is no 
substitute for a language feature.

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

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Tor Olav Kristensen wrote:

> How about making the editor do the re-typing for the lazy ones?

1) What if you want to change it later? You have to do it twice.
2) People can use whichever syntax they prefer.
3) If more and more fancy features are added to the editor it will consume more
resources.
   a) I'm not saying I don't like column-select and all that; very useful!
   b) I don't like it when the computer modifies my work.
4) :-p

--
___     _______________________________________________
 | \     |_          <dav### [at] faricynet> <ICQ 55354965>
 |_/avid |ontaine        http://www.faricy.net/~davidf/

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." -Dali

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On Thu, 09 Mar 2000 23:14:57 +0100, Tor Olav Kristensen wrote:
>If you use an editor with copy and paste features,
>I would guess that the maximum number of extra
>keystrokes you would have to do is about 7 or 8.
>(Or even fewer if you use a mouse.)

There are other reasons to prefer += in a case like that.  If I have 

#declare [big complicated expression] += 3;

and 

#declare [big complicated expression] = [big complicated expression]+3;

and I'm trying to debug the code, I don't have to verify that the 
big complicated expression in the first statement matches anything.

Also, it helps parse time if POV only has to parse the big complicated 
expression once.

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In article <chrishuff_99-20910D.19132109032000@news.povray.org> , Chris Huff
<chr### [at] yahoocom>  wrote:

> That would be a nice option for the Mac version too, which I believe
> uses the WASTE text engine. This capability might be built in to the
> WASTE engine already...

No, unfortunately not. The WASTE text engine is actually targeted as a
replacement for small scale word processing (World Script Aware _Styled_
Text Engine), and was originally not even designed as plain editor.
In the official version I had to add numerous hooks support all the nice
editor-like features like auto-indenting and syntax coloring. MacMegaPOV
also uses WASTE, and currently has functions around WASTE to get indenting.

Either way, WASTE was not designed as an editor. It does a good job, but
adding such features as auto-completion is either done by a lot of working
around it or by some inside modifications and hooks.  It is possible with
reasonable work, but not a free feature :-(


    Thorsten

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Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote:
: So the way I see it by adding this you would save yourself the effort
: of typing one character.

#declare LoopXIndex = LoopXIndex + 1;

#declare LoopXIndex += 1;

: The question the potential patch writer must
: ask himself then is if it be worth the effort to patch the program to
: accept this new style of arguement just to save the user from having
: to type one more character into their scene file.

  I don't think that it would be hard to implement.
  In the same way one could ask why we need a torus primitive when we can
do it with a quartic?

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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Tor Olav Kristensen <tor### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
: But what if ...

  The idea was not to _replace_ the while-loop, but make an _addition_ to
the povray language. You don't have to use it if you don't want to.


-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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I think that there should some struct-type and reference-type data types.
This would allow, for example, making linked lists.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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