"Zeger Knaepen" <zeg### [at] povplacecom> wrote:
> I disagree, I almost always specify the axis (rotate y*45 for instance) and
> intuitively I would expect something like "rotate <1,1,0>*45" to rotate 45
> degrees around the <1,1,0> vector, not 45 degrees around the x-vector
> followed by a 45 degrees rotation around the y-axis

Hm... the notation "rotate <1,1,0>*45" does seem intuitive, but I guess we'd
need four parameters. Otherwise you'd be surprised why the result would be a
rotation by 63 degrees instead ;)

A nice thing though would be some quick syntax for specifying a normalized
vector, which would work with that syntax; maybe something like:

  rotate <<1,1,0>> * 45 deg

BTW, I'd really like that "deg" keyword to specify angles. Or, preferably, even
the "degree" sign, as in:



but unfortunately it's not ASCII, and therefore a portability issue.
Maybe an extension to numerical literals could do the trick to get something
visually similar:

  rotate <<1,1,0>> * 45o

Really cool would be something like:

  rotate <<1,1,0>> * 45o20'10.37".

But that would cause issues with some editors doing some rudimentary syntax
highlighting...

.... oh well...

Post a reply to this message