PovOL (Pov-Ray Object Language) is a toy language that provides access to the
ray tracing facilities of the Pov-Ray engine via simple definitions of Pov-Ray
objects. It is NOT an object-oriented language. It is developed using
Microsoft's Oslo's MGrammar and generates code to SDL. It is by no means a
replacement for SDL (far from it!) but is meant to give practical access to new
users to Pov-Ray's powerful capabilities.

It can be tried-out online to generate ray-traced images via
http://www.sixpairs.com/povol.aspx. The online tool generates transparent png's
as images. Animation is not yet supported online but is available with the
PovGen tool (desktop WPF application) which intrinsically generates animated
gifs.

Ciper
http://sixpairs.com
cey### [at] gmailcom

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"Ciper" <cey### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> PovOL (Pov-Ray Object Language) is a toy language that provides access to the
> ray tracing facilities of the Pov-Ray engine via simple definitions of Pov-Ray
> objects. It is NOT an object-oriented language. It is developed using
> Microsoft's Oslo's MGrammar and generates code to SDL. It is by no means a
> replacement for SDL (far from it!) but is meant to give practical access to new
> users to Pov-Ray's powerful capabilities.

Ah - okay - so, what are its benefits over the current SDL?

The first things I notice is that it does not have the {} bracing, but replaces
them with either "end" or ";", probably making the language more difficult to
learn (when do I use ";", when do I use "end"?).

Second thing I notice is that it eliminates keywords like "pigment" when a
variable is used, making it faster to type, but easier to mess up if variable
names happen to be rather cryptic (you don't get a warning that the variable
doesn't contin what you thought it did).

Thirdly I notice the introduction of what seems to be a new primitive, "axis".
Nice, but not particularly a language feature.

Then, I notice that there's no documentation yet whatsoever, which makes it hard
to try out anything serious.

(And ultimately, I notice that the use of the copyright sign in conjunction with
the text "Persistence of Vision" is rather inappropriate in this context,
legally speaking.)


All in all, I don't see how this new language would improve access to POV-Ray to
new users; to me it seems inferior syntactically, and aside from that I expect
it to be more limited than SDL, so that users of the language striving for more
would have to switch over to SDL anyway, which then would require them to
re-learn.

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"clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> "Ciper" <cey### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > PovOL (Pov-Ray Object Language) is a toy language that provides access to the
> > ray tracing facilities of the Pov-Ray engine via simple definitions of Pov-Ray
> > objects. It is NOT an object-oriented language. It is developed using
> > Microsoft's Oslo's MGrammar and generates code to SDL. It is by no means a
> > replacement for SDL (far from it!) but is meant to give practical access to new
> > users to Pov-Ray's powerful capabilities.
>
> Ah - okay - so, what are its benefits over the current SDL?
>
> The first things I notice is that it does not have the {} bracing, but replaces
> them with either "end" or ";", probably making the language more difficult to
> learn (when do I use ";", when do I use "end"?).
>
> Second thing I notice is that it eliminates keywords like "pigment" when a
> variable is used, making it faster to type, but easier to mess up if variable
> names happen to be rather cryptic (you don't get a warning that the variable
> doesn't contin what you thought it did).
>
> Thirdly I notice the introduction of what seems to be a new primitive, "axis".
> Nice, but not particularly a language feature.
>
> Then, I notice that there's no documentation yet whatsoever, which makes it hard
> to try out anything serious.
>
> (And ultimately, I notice that the use of the copyright sign in conjunction with
> the text "Persistence of Vision" is rather inappropriate in this context,
> legally speaking.)
>
>
> All in all, I don't see how this new language would improve access to POV-Ray to
> new users; to me it seems inferior syntactically, and aside from that I expect
> it to be more limited than SDL, so that users of the language striving for more
> would have to switch over to SDL anyway, which then would require them to
> re-learn.

You are absolutely right in all respects.

No, there is no current benefit over SDL.

It is just a quick & dirty way of intersecting 2 cones (or some such).

Still... I use it.

Nobody can replace SDL! All I do is just generate a very small subset of SDL
for very primitive scenes.

I can cease & desist from generating SDL if that's your wish.

Regards,
Ciper

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