POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.newusers : rounding and logic functions : Re: rounding and logic functions Server Time
7 May 2024 04:27:41 EDT (-0400)
  Re: rounding and logic functions  
From: Bald Eagle
Date: 3 Aug 2013 21:45:01
Message: <web.51fdb16487475f8873fc9ebb0@news.povray.org>
Well, to start off, I find that things like this help me to understand things
WAY more than text.
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.tutorials/thread/%3Cweb.51f61e827603294573fc9ebb0%40news.povray.org%3E/
A picture's worth a thousand words, and all that.

Here's what my first impressions are when I look at that wiki page:

That green text is WAY too small.
I don't know what a unary minus or a unary plus is.
I'd expect mention of exponential functions in the precedence listing.
I'd also point out that (A^2) is not a valid expression - pow(x,2) is the way to
write that in POV-Ray.  And don't confuse pow() with pwr().
I think I tried doing an #if (X=<Y), but the <has to precede the =
I don't know what a bit-wise operation is
THEN should be searchable and linked to the ? operator

abs(A)
Absolute value of A. If A is negative, returns -A otherwise returns A.
#debug concat ("ABS -1 = ",str(abs(-1),3,0)) returns 1, not -1.

I don't know what hyperbolic trig functions are (off the top of my head)

#declare Step = 0;
#while (Step <= 2)
#debug concat ("Number = ",str(Step,3,1))
#debug "\n"
#debug concat ("ceiling = ",str(ceil(Step),3,1))
#debug "\n"
#debug concat ("floor = ",str(ceil(Step),3,1))
#debug "\n"
#debug "\n"
#declare Step = Step + 0.1;
#end

Floor and ceiling return the same value.
THAT's what's wrong with them.

For the function inside(), what is the "object identifier"? is that something
like #declare O=object{}?

strlen() is useful for text functions, but for rendering text in an image, I'd
like to know how large that text will actually be.

You have tan(A) and tanh(), but tan2(A,B) is ... elsewhere.

will val(s) accept val("3X")?

I HAD to render and animate the dot product file in order to understand what it
did.  The text didn't help me understand that it was a vector perpendicular to
the two vectors I was ... dotting.

.... and as a noob, I find it a little disorienting when an example uses some
obscure POV-Ray function without a prior simple/common one...
#if (image_width < 300) crand 0.1 #else crand 0.5 #end
.... because now I have to interrupt my train of thought and go off on some
tangent to look up what "crand" is.

So, there's an example of my constructive criticism.

Feel free to email me with requests for illustrations or proofreading /
commentary.

Thanks for what I'm sure is a TON of hard work, James.  I've been there, so I
know what it's like.


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