I expect this question has been asked before, but i'm wondering whether there is
a specific reason why POV-Ray only supports soft shadows on Area lights,
considering its age and all the other features it has (e.g. radiosity,
volumetrics, photon mapping etc.).

Soft shadows on all lights is quite a standard feature of renderers, and in
theory quite a simple process (although I'm not a programmer), but I have no
idea why this renderer never got it despite its age. Being able to add soft
shadows to directional and point lights would be a tremendous benefit to most
scenes, unless of course there is a workaround for it.

P.S. Same goes for glossy reflections too, while there is a workaround for it,
it is not a particularly 'clean' solution (unless you use MegaPOV instead). AO
also seems impossible without using a workaround with Radiosity, which kind of
kills the point of using AO to 'fake' GI a bit and speed up renders :/

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