I was wondering if it  will ever be (or is it already) to create add-ons for
POV where those users working so hard on patches new features etc. would be
able to just release an add-on or plug-in that POV would load and run rather
than having to modify the existing code and recompile and release the whole
program.  Or do I just not understand the way the program is set-up?  (I
would suspect the latter, but hope the former)

-tgq

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That would be great, but it is not possible to do in a cross-platform way.
And cross-platform compatibility is one of the fundamental values (so to
speak) of POV.

-Nathan

"TinCanMan" <Tin### [at] hotmailcom> wrote...
> I was wondering if it  will ever be (or is it already) to create add-ons
for
> POV where those users working so hard on patches new features etc. would
be
> able to just release an add-on or plug-in that POV would load and run
rather
> than having to modify the existing code and recompile and release the
whole
> program.  Or do I just not understand the way the program is set-up?  (I
> would suspect the latter, but hope the former)
>
> -tgq
>
>

Post a reply to this message

>Nathan Kopp" <pov### [at] nkoppmailshellcom> wrote in message
news:3daccc16$1@news.povray.org...
>
> That would be great, but it is not possible to do in a cross-platform way.
> And cross-platform compatibility is one of the fundamental values (so to
> speak) of POV.

That's too bad I guess.  I have been watching some of the recent fixes and
patches and was hoping that someday there would be a simple way to use these
without having to install full patched versions (or wait for the next issue
of MegaPOV ;) )

-tgq

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In article <3dac9f3d$1@news.povray.org>,
 "TinCanMan" <Tin### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:

> I was wondering if it  will ever be (or is it already) to create add-ons for
> POV where those users working so hard on patches new features etc. would be
> able to just release an add-on or plug-in that POV would load and run rather
> than having to modify the existing code and recompile and release the whole
> program.  Or do I just not understand the way the program is set-up?  (I
> would suspect the latter, but hope the former)

Not really. Different processors need different machine code, and 
different systems have their own way of loading things like this, so the 
plugins would have to be compiled for each system and POV would have to 
be modified to load them for each system. It is pretty much impossible 
without having to change major parts of the code...though 4.0 might make 
this easier, it probably still won't ever be an official feature.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

"TinCanMan" <Tin### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in
news:3dac9f3d$1@news.povray.org 

> I was wondering if it  will ever be (or is it already) to create
> add-ons for POV where those users working so hard on patches new


Personaly I'm against plugins / addons, BUT instead - it would be great to 
make soem official tutorial how to write a path, how to write formal 
documentation for it, and to choose some peoples that will merge well-
tested plugins into official releases but more often then today (maybe once 
per 2 or 4 weeks)

-- 
#macro g(U,V)(.4*abs(sin(9*sqrt(pow(x-U,2)+pow(y-V,2))))*pow(1-min(1,(sqrt(
pow(x-U,2)+pow(y-V,2))*.3)),2)+.9)#end#macro p(c)#if(c>1)#local l=mod(c,100
);g(2*div(l,10)-8,2*mod(l,10)-8)*p(div(c,100))#else 1#end#end light_source{
y 2}sphere{z*20 9pigment{function{p(26252423)*p(36455644)*p(66656463)}}}//M

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I guess the problem with patches is, that unless
you try to add something totally new (another
preprocessing step for cloth/particles/whatever,
which then use the standard object, or a new
object altogether), the patches will make changes
to similiar parts of the code, and thus may not work
together. I'm not too sure how easy it is to
add another functionality to preprocessing (like
mentioned cloth/partcles) or postprocessing
(especially if data from image has to be saved, like
depth, surface normals, etc). I'm no programmer
yet, and I've got hardly any experience, but I know
from my Particle-System (written in POV-SDL) that
adding features isn't as easy as one sometimes supposes
it could be.


--
Tim Nikias
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights/index.html
Email: Tim### [at] gmxde

>
> > I was wondering if it  will ever be (or is it already) to create
> > add-ons for POV where those users working so hard on patches new
>
>
> Personaly I'm against plugins / addons, BUT instead - it would be great to
> make soem official tutorial how to write a path, how to write formal
> documentation for it, and to choose some peoples that will merge well-
> tested plugins into official releases but more often then today (maybe
once
> per 2 or 4 weeks)

Post a reply to this message

On 18 Oct 2002 08:49:16 -0400, "Rafal 'Raf256' Maj" <raf### [at] raf256com> wrote:
> Personaly I'm against plugins / addons, BUT instead - it would be great to 
> make soem official tutorial how to write a path

Rafal, do you know how many aspects POV-Ray source code solves ? How many new
things can be introduced with patches ? And how often they are introduced ?
For example I'm implementing MPEG2 reading into POV. How often new input
format is introduced ? Who would like to write turorial just for me ? Things
are usually implemented once - isosurfaces, motion blur, sphere_sweep, etc.
Nobody have time to spend time to write turorials about such complicated
things becouse it is better to use this time. It is different thing to write
good comments nad theoretical explanation. But that is not a tutorial about
writing patch. Of course there are some common operations when patch is
created like adding keywords to parser. But such tutorials exist.

> how to write formal 
> documentation for it

Docbook was recently suggested. I'm personally consider such solution.

> and to choose some peoples that will merge well-
> tested plugins into official releases but more often then today (maybe once 
> per 2 or 4 weeks)

Please show me serious project with _official_ releases every two weeks.

ABX

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