Lukas Winter <web### [at] geloeschtremovethisandthedotbeforenet> wrote:
> Historically for POV-Ray, plain SDL has been the only way to save scene
> data to disk. I believe that serialization of scene data would be a
> useful feature, but perhaps instead of developing just another binary
> scene format, POV-Ray 4 could just save compiled bytecode to recreate the
> scene or parts of it.

Yup. I guess that's how I'd too it as well.

Instantiating the items isn't that time consuming after all (especially in case
of already-parsed bytecode); it's usually the user code deciding where to place
the things in the first place.

Saving the current scene contents by generating bytecode to re-create it also
saves a lot of brain-wrecking how to actually serialize the data; after all, I
guess we want saved scenes to be portable between different platforms. I do,
for instance: I use both Linux and Windows, and occasionally exchange some
auto-generated .inc files between them. POV 4.0 should be able to do that at
least as easy.

And besides, I really expect not much of a performance loss when using bytecode
instead of a portable serialization framework. And it might be easier to cope
with compatibility stuff regarding new versions.

So yes, "serialization" by generating bytecode to re-create the current "scene
element tree" would be the way to go, if I'm asked.

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