Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> 
> Then you fundamentally misunderstood the point we always made: We will not
> discuss the design in public, and we do not endorse design discussions in
> public either.  Every discussion about design ideas is just ignored,
> regardless of what is being discussed.

Speaking only for myself:

this is a bit exaggerated (or at least could be easily misunderstood). 
Development of POV-Ray does (and i hope will always do) include 
discussion in the POV Community.  This of course does not mean that 
everything is first discussed in the public newsgroups.

What does this mean for discussing ideas: I would no way generally 
discourage starting discussion of individual ideas for future POV-Ray 
development including design issues.  But you should always remember 
that whatever result such a discussion might have this will not 
necessarily have an effect on what's actually developed.  So it would 
probably be a better idea to keep such a discussion focussed more on 
requirements than on actual design.  Note i am not talking about 
concrete raytracing features here, i mean general requirements you 
consider important for the planning of a new POV-Ray.  Discussing 
concrete features now would be like starting to build a house by 
building the roof.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Sim-POV,
HCR-Edit and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
Last updated 23 Sep. 2004 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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> consider important for the planning of a new POV-Ray.  Discussing 
> concrete features now would be like starting to build a house by 
> building the roof.

Would that be what is called top-down design?
:->
Daniel

-- 
A most peculiar man    With the windows closed      And Mrs Reardon says
He died last Saturday  So he'd never wake up  He has a brother somewhere
He turned on the gas   To his silent world   Who should be notified soon
And he went to sleep   And his tiny room    .oO( http://sad.istic.org/ )

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In article <pan### [at] uwaterlooca> , Andrew Clinton 
<ajc### [at] uwaterlooca>  wrote:

> I'm wondering if all the team members feel the same way

I am just summarizing our public status reports.  My post was not meant to
express only my opinion, but the opinion already publicly stated by the
team.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich
e-mail: mac### [at] povrayorg

I am a member of the POV-Ray Team.
Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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In article <ckvtr0$27j$1@chho.imagico.de> , Christoph Hormann 
<chr### [at] gmxde>  wrote:

> So it would
> probably be a better idea to keep such a discussion focussed more on
> requirements than on actual design

Exactly.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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In article <200### [at] dh286pemcamacuk> , Daniel Hulme 
<pho### [at] isticorg>  wrote:

>> consider important for the planning of a new POV-Ray.  Discussing
>> concrete features now would be like starting to build a house by
>> building the roof.
>
> Would that be what is called top-down design?
> :->

No, it would be called "failed design" ;-)

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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Andrew Clinton <ajc### [at] uwaterlooca> wrote:
> > Then you fundamentally misunderstood the point we always made: We will
> > not discuss the design in public, and we do not endorse design
> > discussions in public either...

> I'm really sorry to hear that.  This opinion seems so unusual for an open
> source project that I'm wondering if all the team members feel the same
> way.

  What would be the point of having tons of people throwing random thoughts
and usually just creating endless flamewars about tiny details of the new
design?

  There's a saying at least in Finnish (which I don't know if exists in
English) about several cooks cooking the same soup. It tries to indicate
that usually when something needs to be designed, the more designers there
are, the worse the result. The result just ends up being a chaotic mess
of different, usually inconsistent parts which are hard to maintain.
  It's often a better idea to have one or at most two experts who are
responsible of the main design.

  If the design of pov4 would be based on public discussion, most of the
input would be of the type "why don't we make it in Java" and "let's make
the SDL based on XML" and attrocities like that, and there would simply
be endless flamewars with people advocating something and other people
opposing it. And most of these opinions would be made by people with no
experience whatsoever on the design and implementation of big projects.
It would serve no-one.

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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> There's a saying at least in Finnish (which I don't know if exists in
> English) about several cooks cooking the same soup. It tries to

Yes, it does exist in English, in the form 'Too many cooks spoil the
broth.' Broth is a kind of halfway thing between soup and stew.

As for the debate that my post seems to have sparked, I can sympathise
with the POV-Team's complaints: I have experienced similar things on
other projects, and the XMMS team has on their website somewhere a log
from the #xmms channel which is a brilliant example of why open source
is bad. However, I think the POV-Team could do a little more to
encourage people to help out, even if it is to just be a bit more
friendly in receiving suggestions and ideas. Surely the views of the
users are important in a redesign; even if you have to filter out a lot
of them, the good ideas are often enough to make up for the inane ones.
There is a book called 'Programming as if People Mattered' which focuses
on UI design and the programmer-user interface. It has a chapter called
'Listen to Your Users, but Ignore What They Say'. I find that to be a
useful maxim, as what users tell you they want is not really what they
want, as people have been complaining about their bosses in p.o-t.

As for me personally, I am committed to doing my project now, and I will
make the final output available. What gets done with it after that,
whether it is incorporated or ignored, does not greatly bother me. At
the risk of becoming o-t myself, I'd better sign off here.

Daniel

-- 
A most peculiar man    With the windows closed      And Mrs Reardon says
He died last Saturday  So he'd never wake up  He has a brother somewhere
He turned on the gas   To his silent world   Who should be notified soon
And he went to sleep   And his tiny room    .oO( http://sad.istic.org/ )

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   What would be the point of having tons of people throwing random thoughts
> and usually just creating endless flamewars about tiny details of the new
> design?

Null.  However, it doesn't necessary get to that, and there are various ways
of implementing the shades of gray :)

Open discussion about the design is, imho, more important than the same
about actual implementation.

>   It's often a better idea to have one or at most two experts who are
> responsible of the main design.

Very true.  Open discussion however doesn't imply an open design.  I for one
would be very happy to let the experienced POV-coders to do the actual
design decisions, but I'd like to know I have a fair chance of being heard
if I happen to come up with an idea or problem I think is worth noting.

>   If the design of pov4 would be based on public discussion, most of the
> input would be of the type "why don't we make it in Java" and "let's make
> the SDL based on XML" and attrocities like that, and there would simply
> be endless flamewars with people advocating something and other people
> opposing it.

There are *so* many ways of avoiding that.  The funniest one probably being,
set up a mailing list where Thorsten can allow entrance to people he deems
worthy :-) (it would probably be one the best ways too!)

I've been waiting for a good spot to bring up one particular concern of
mine, and while this probably isn't the perfect spot, I'll open my mouth
anyway.

The POV-Ray SDL.  I read from a post that v4 will include a new version of
the SDL.  Is this true?  How extensive are the planned changes?  Why, if I
may ask, are they required?

--
jussi.kantola

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In article <web.4173bbae82c5f45e67c1c3ff0@news.povray.org> , "jute" 
<nomail@nomail> wrote:

> would be very happy to let the experienced POV-coders to do the actual
> design decisions, but I'd like to know I have a fair chance of being heard
> if I happen to come up with an idea or problem I think is worth noting.

The point is, would you be happy if you could just state it and never get a
reply?  Because the best reply you could get its along the lines "we
considered it".  There certainly would be no justification or other
explanation ...

> There are *so* many ways of avoiding that.  The funniest one probably being,
> set up a mailing list where Thorsten can allow entrance to people he deems
> worthy :-) (it would probably be one the best ways too!)

... which you seem to expect.  Yet, you cannot discuss a whole design only
by email.

> I've been waiting for a good spot to bring up one particular concern of
> mine, and while this probably isn't the perfect spot, I'll open my mouth
> anyway.
>
> The POV-Ray SDL.  I read from a post that v4 will include a new version of
> the SDL.  Is this true?  How extensive are the planned changes?  Why, if I
> may ask, are they required?

And here you show one of the primary reasons why even public and unendorsed
discussions result in confusion: There has never been a statement in this
regard.  In fact, there has not really been any statement about design
specifics.  If I had said nothing now, you would just have started a
discussion about nothing more but hearsay!

This is absolutely contrary to what I very explicitly stated: There is and
has not been any discussion about the design in the public.  All you may
have read somewhere other than the FAQ group or that was explicitly stated
to be a public POV-Team statement is something you should not be concerned
about at all.

Also, it should be absolutely clear that a public justification and
explanation of every point somebody might rise if a design would be
discussed in public would be a complete waste of time for everybody. Your
post has shown to very important points of the list of things why the design
should not be discussed and no such discussion will be endorsed by the
POV-Team in public.

If you want to make suggestions, please say what you want, but neither how
what you want should look like nor how is should be implemented or designed.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 06:14:33 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>   What would be the point of having tons of people throwing random thoughts
> and usually just creating endless flamewars about tiny details of the new
> design?
> 

Despite the flame wars, the discussions I was referring to (for your
information, "The language of POV-Ray" and "Pov-Ray 4.0? Wish List.")
seemed to generate some of the best ideas for a major redesign that I have
seen mentioned.  These discussions were not generally about tiny details
of the design, but about large overarching changes to the program that
have the potential to make it better in significant ways.  I don't
understand the motivation for ignoring such discussions just because there
are some ideas that are not to the 'Team's liking.  It's easy enough to
ignore or inform the people who haven't a clue about what they are talking
about, and (discuss / argue / flamewar) with the rest.  At least in this
case there is an outward sign that the Team has an interest in becoming
better informed about the needs of its user base, and also has the
opportunity to show some signs of "life" (if you will), so that users know
that the project is not stagnating.

Of course, if the POV-Team already has a perfect knowledge of the needs of
its users, and a perfect knowledge of how to design a renderer, then there
is no such need for discussion.

Andrew

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