On Wed, 08 Dec 1999 01:38:01 +0900, Nigel Stewart wrote:
>	Go easy on Ken.  He might not be familiar with OpenGL,
>	he might not even be a programmer, but he is quite a
>	enthusiastic and productive POV-ray kind of a guy,
>	and very helpful to have around.

Xander's reply was to Warp, not Ken.  To reply to Warp in my own
way, I'd say that my impression is that while the POV-Team strives
for portability, there are some features that aren't and can't be
portable.  If ANSI-standard C was the only rule by which things got
added, there would be no preview display, or Mac GUI, or Windows
GUI, or DOS help screens, or x-povray, or...  you get the idea.  
OpenGL seems fairly widespread, so I would say that if an OGL 
preview deserves to be shot down it deserves to be shot down on its 
own merits as a feature rather than because OGL isn't available on 
the DOS or Amiga platforms.  That's just my opinion, though; I may
be in the minority.

>	And, as a final thought - it is much easier to 
>	toss ideas around as being desirable, feasible,
>	or the way to go, but something else entirely
>	to do the work yourself, or convince someone 
>	on the POV team of your dream.  

Um... Xander is on the POV-Team, and is also the author of Polyray,
which does successfully tesselate lots of different objects.  If he
decided to do so, he could probably do most of the necessary code 
for tesselation in his sleep.  

FWIW, I think tesselation of primitives would be a fairly useful 
feature, too, and not just for OGL preview.  I still think the OGL 
preview wouldn't be much faster than current preview methods, given
the parse time, but I see lots of other uses for being able to make
triangles out of primitives.

-- 
These are my opinions.  I do NOT speak for the POV-Team.
The superpatch: http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/superpatch/
My other stuff: http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/traces.html

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