"MessyBlob" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> re. DOM, features, parsing.
>
> There are a number of scenarios where I've wished for scenario testing, e.g. to
> see if an object fits in a space, one could do ray-tracing in the SDL on the
> scene as it is being built, but what we can't do NOW is put an object in, do
> some processing, then remove the object from the scene if we don't want it.

What good would that do? I mean, stuff that trace() and inside() cannot do for
you yet?

An example of what sort of processing you have in mind would be helpful.


> I think this type of 'spatial awareness', along with some functions to compute
> overlapping (whether directly, or via bounds of computed intersections), would
> go a long way for people who generate scenes procedurally.

POV simply cannot really compute overlapping, for reasons of its very basic
design. No way. It cannot even really compute the bounds of "computed
intersections" (whatever that would be in POV internals terms). All it can do
is compute the intersection of computed bounds. Which some nice macros can do
just as well using with min_extent(), max_extent() and the min()/max()
functions.

Really, everything POV can do with geometry is based on trace() and inside() -
plus the bounding boxes. This is really all POV has to offer in terms of
"spatial awareness". No hidden secrets. You have it *all* at your disposal in
SDL.

It's probably more a question of how *fast* it can be done.

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