POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.advanced-users : user-defined functions-- basic question of use : Re: user-defined functions-- basic question of use Server Time
28 Apr 2024 18:21:47 EDT (-0400)
  Re: user-defined functions-- basic question of use  
From: Kenneth
Date: 27 Feb 2018 19:10:00
Message: <web.5a95f296e9ce4cfda47873e10@news.povray.org>
"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> "Thorsten Froehlich" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
>
> > Well, the documentation was actually written as a book, not as a set of bits to
> > take and use without the context of the containing sections.
>

Thinking about this further, I suppose that there could have been a different
'philosophy' at work regarding POV-Ray's documentation itself, back when some of
the original docs were written long ago: that the program was meant for those
users who already had programming experience (and the consequent necessary math
skills to go with it.) Meaning, functions et al would have already been
understood as to their uses. Personally, I didn't come from such a programming
background (other than maths classes at university plus some old(!) FORTRAN
experience there, then some BASIC experience as just a hobby.) I guess that's
why I've always wanted the POV-Ray docs to clearly spell out what its
features do, with examples. Especially the harder-to-grasp math parts.

Although, it's a different world now; even kiddies are learning to program!
There are probably 10-year-olds who could teach me more about functions, vector
transforms etc than I already know. ;-)


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