POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : #macros-- a simple question : #macros-- a simple question Server Time
29 Apr 2024 01:21:52 EDT (-0400)
  #macros-- a simple question  
From: Kenneth
Date: 8 Jul 2017 16:25:00
Message: <web.59613eb1a944d1b4883fb31c0@news.povray.org>
This little problem makes me feel like I'm losing more brain cells than normal,
as I get older. But I'll explain anyway...

From my (faulty??) memory of POV-Ray v3.6xx days, I thought that a #macro could
be written *anywhere* in a scene file, and called from anywhere. In other words,
no need to write the two in a 'linear' way in the file-- #macro first, THEN the
call. But I now see that in 3.7xx (3.7.1 beta 8), a #macro needs to be written
'higher up' in the file, before it's called later in the scene. (Doing the
reverse doesn't work.) For some strange reason, this comes as a surprise to
me(!)

Did v3.6xx operate differently?

*** By the way, the in-built documentation about macros says only this: "A macro
must be declared before it is invoked."  Hmm. Depending on how I read that, it
could mean the *obvious* fact that something-- anything-- needs to be created
before it can be used. OR, it could mean that the #macro definition needs to be
WRITTEN earlier in the scene file first, to be FOLLOWED by the invocation of it
later (like any other linear-programming item.) The wording is a wee bit too
simplistic and ambiguous.


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