"Patrick Elliott" <sha### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
news:MPG.1bf481927c67ef3e989c10@news.povray.org...
[deletions]

: Too bad.. Unfortunately making something and convincing them it is useful
: is not always the same thing. You sometimes have to show them how useful
: it is in a significant way. I am more the "any thing that makes like
: easier" sort and I can see that as a feature with would make some things
: easier.

I used it to do something for my department (created some 3D
graphs and charts directly from dBASE files) but later realized
I could do it much faster in C++ and have the program write the
SDL for me.
=Bob=

Post a reply to this message

"Christopher James Huff" <cja### [at] earthlinknet> wrote in message
news:cjameshuff-66B0E8.20321304112004@news.povray.org...
[deletions]

: However, some more versatile data structures (easily modifiable arrays,
: lists, sets, and dictionaries) would be very useful. Also things like
: point sets and other more specialized structures...

Being able to define a structure like in C would be very nice.
=Bob=

Post a reply to this message

"Jim Charter" <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote in message
news:418ac793$1@news.povray.org...
> >
> Like invoking a program?  Don't think so.  I believe the last time the
> question can up, the answer was: start with the external program and us
> it to invoke POV.

Yeah, that occured to me - it would just be nicer to run it from within pov.

Post a reply to this message

> Except databases go beyond simple I/O. [...]
Yeah, I know that. My idea was to write an inc-file which would act as 
an interface to a database-server, by writing out SQL-statements to 
text-files, which would then be executed/parsed using a normal command 
line database client and the exec-command I described.

Florian
-- 
camera{look_at-y*10location<8,-3,-8>*10}#local a=0;#while(a<999)sphere{
#local _=.01*a-4.99;#local p=a*.01-5;#local c=.01*a-4.995;<sin(p*pi)*5p
*10pow(p,5)*.01>sin(c*c*c*.1)+1pigment{rgb 3}}#local a=a+1;#end
/******** http://www.torfbold.com ******** http://www.imp.org ********/

Post a reply to this message

Attention: This post does not contain official feature-requests :)

> : However, some more versatile data structures (easily modifiable arrays,
> : lists, sets, and dictionaries) would be very useful. Also things like
> : point sets and other more specialized structures...

> Being able to define a structure like in C would be very nice.

References. I want references :) I think adding real pointers to the SDL 
would be a bad idea, but I often run into situations where I'd like to 
be able to do some referencing...

Also I'd like to have better encapsulation options, like non-global 
macros and an include-file-wide identifier-table, which is shared with 
macros (e.g. to allow a macro to access a variable in the same 
include-file which is not accessable from the outside of the include-file).

The ultimate feature would be class-like access to already defined 
structures, like

#declare MyUnion = union { ... }
#foreach (Object in MyUnion)
	#if (Object is union)
		#debug "Union!\n"
	#else
		#debug "Some other object!\n"
	#end
	#foreach (Texture in Object.textures)
		Texture.finish.reflection = 1;
	#end
#end


Florian
-- 
camera{look_at-y*10location<8,-3,-8>*10}#local a=0;#while(a<999)sphere{
#local _=.01*a-4.99;#local p=a*.01-5;#local c=.01*a-4.995;<sin(p*pi)*5p
*10pow(p,5)*.01>sin(c*c*c*.1)+1pigment{rgb 3}}#local a=a+1;#end
/******** http://www.torfbold.com ******** http://www.imp.org ********/

Post a reply to this message

>> Could be fun - can someone remind me, can pov construct and execute external
>> commands?

> Like invoking a program?  Don't think so.  I believe the last time the 
> question can up, the answer was: start with the external program and us 
> it to invoke POV.

So if you got multiple include-files (from different authors), which all 
need to run one or more different programs you want to do this how? 
Write a wrapper application for all of them?

Florian
-- 
camera{look_at-y*10location<8,-3,-8>*10}#local a=0;#while(a<999)sphere{
#local _=.01*a-4.99;#local p=a*.01-5;#local c=.01*a-4.995;<sin(p*pi)*5p
*10pow(p,5)*.01>sin(c*c*c*.1)+1pigment{rgb 3}}#local a=a+1;#end
/******** http://www.torfbold.com ******** http://www.imp.org ********/

Post a reply to this message

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Patrick Elliott wrote:
| Except databases go beyond simple I/O. For instance, a smart system
could
| read in the contents of a .inc file to the database (or the
equivalent),
| which will only be used in an animation in say 50 frames out of
100, then
| only read that back in from the DB 'when' it is needed, rather than
| parsing the entire file each time. I suspect that is a bit harder to
| manage currently, if it is even possible.

	You mean, something like that?

#if ((clock > 0.25) && (clock < 0.75))
~  #include "foo.inc"
#end

	Myself, I don't really see what databases could add to POV. Much
easier to have utilities written in C/C++/Python/Perl/<insert
favorite language here> that will access the database when you have
an application that requires one. Moreover, this would work whatever
the DB you want to use.

	Now, having an "exec" command might be useful, but we already have
ini options that bring most of the equivalent functionnality for
animations. For single images, it's probably better to run the
commands by hand so that you don't have to rerun everything at each
try...

		Jerome

- --
******************************
*      Jerome M. Berger      *
* mailto:jbe### [at] ifrancecom *
*  http://jeberger.free.fr/  *
******************************
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFBi7+5qIYJdJhyixIRAqAUAJ9FNVcTcql6jFYqQGIO6K8+9cy/VQCgq2FV
UsPbdlq6J9+XvCe6TNVmrYY=
=rmzr
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Post a reply to this message

in news:418aa69d@news.povray.org Gilles Tran wrote:

> I have wondered several times about a built-in ODBC connectivity in
> the SDL (rather than an embedded database).

Didn't think of ODBC, could be nice indeed. Using POV-Ray to connect to 
the central texture and object libraries on povray.org :)

> Coupled with a good SDL library for
> charts and graphs that could be interesting for people who are into
> scientific visualisation. 

With or without a database, that would be a nice thing to have.

Ingo

Post a reply to this message

in news:418ab6a5@news.povray.org =Bob= wrote:

> I made a Pov 3.1 version that had dBASE III read and write
> capability. 

Can't remeber that, sounds interesting. What did you use it for?

Ingo

Post a reply to this message

"ingo" <ing### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:Xns9598CF2A99E8Eseed7@news.povray.org...
: in news:418ab6a5@news.povray.org =Bob= wrote:
: > I made a Pov 3.1 version that had dBASE III read and write
: > capability.
:
: Can't remeber that, sounds interesting. What did you use it for?

I used it to create some charts and graphs. But I found later
that it was easier and quicker to just write a program in C++
that uses some very nice libraries to read and write dBASE
directly (FOX indexes) or using ODBC and write the SDL
includes instead. Easier to maintain for me too. Runs fast!
=Bob=

Post a reply to this message