William Tracy <wtr### [at] calpolyedu> wrote:
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> Warp wrote:
> >   What should be added is a new scripting language which makes it easy
> > to create mesh subdivision libraries (among many, many other thigns).
>
> Okay, we want an SDL that is fast, simple/easy to learn, and
> flexible/extensible.
>
> I'm wondering if maybe the best way to achieve the third goal is not
> through SDL, but by adding a plugin architecture to POV. The plugins
> would presumably be written in C++; they would be fast and flexible, and
> there would be no "polluting" of the SDL. You could modify and
> redistribute plugins without having to build custom versions of POV.
>
> The big downsides that I see are that the plugins would have to be
> recompiled for each architecture, and the possibility of malicious
> plugins. Both of these might be fixed via a scripted or
> bytecode-compiled language (Java comes to mind, naturally).
>
> Comments?

The architecture I proposed allows plugins to be defined, independant of
platform and OS because there is a high-level intermediate language that is
Java. Plugins could be pieces of code that are coded following rules that
comply the relationship between SDL and the rendering engine. JIT'ed Java
is quick enough for plugins or callable user code. It also facilitates to
have a debugging feature during parse time AND render time. See my chart in
a previous post.

Whatever the language will be, if some user-defined feature and its
implementation are satisfactory, it can then be envisionned to 'hardcode'
it within the core system in a future official release, and make it a
built-in feature rather than a plug-in or 'library component'. All systems
evolve that way, more or less, in my experience.

Shipping POV4 with a standard JRE (or a specific subset) is absolutely not
much of a problem, I think.


Bruno

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