"stevenvh" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> But I'm still wondering if CSG can't be extended in a future version of POV-Ray.
> A 'cutaway' (or 'remove' or 'delete') could make CSG more fit for an
> OO-approach. Something like this:

I don't think it makes any sense to add such an extension to the SDL, because...

(a) It leaves open a lot of questions; what happens, for example, if you merge
two objects, and one of them want to cut away something where the other wants
to add? A use case for the former could be decorations on a wall, that need to
be cut away too in order to add a window; a use case of the latter could be
some plant that you want to grow through an open window;

(b) It probably cannot be done by a simple extension of the existing parser, and
therefore would require significant changes also to the render engine; so
assuming that probably not too many users think as much "OO-ish" as you do when
writing POV code, I'd say it's probably not worth the hassle. You as one of the
very few "OO-extremists" (pardon the expression - no offense intended) can
rather easily work around this limitation by thinking a bit less "OO-ish", and
the development team can concentrate on features that are of benefit to a
larger portion of the users.
  I do appreciate the benefits of OO, but I think adding kludges to the existing
SDL to faciliate placing an OO-ish macro framework atop of it is the wrong way.
Instead, if the development team would commit to actively supporting OO-ish
scene description, then the way to go would really be a brand new SDL.

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