hi,

"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> "jr" <cre### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > www.povray.org/resources/ should be used for such (important) contributor's
> > files imo, the site seems the "natural" place to look for stuff.
>
> It would be a great place to look for _new_ stuff that has yet to be extensively
> tested, [ab]used, and deemed ready for converting to C++.

I was thinking .. archive(s).  ;-)


> At present, there's SO MUCH old stuff, that we'd need a library sciences major
> to sift through it all, and make value judgments about what was important, what
> were unfinished experiments, and what were spurious and mysterious posts.

ah, I thought this was about things like the ccolefax .zip files and such.


> If there's a way to automate an indexing of all the attachments and in-line code
> posts, that would be a quick and easy start, as would some method for tracking
> how many times a file has been viewed / downloaded.
>
> > also, it is
> > not good advertising for POV-Ray to see the out-of-date links collection.
>
> True.  It would be nice to have a facelift for the site as well, and even
> "advertising".   Part of my concern about the early part of the learning curve
> is to make POV-Ray ever more accessible and immediately usable for people just
> discovering it, so that we can start growing the user base.

what POV-Ray "needs" is a decent book or two written about it.  :-(


> > ... point{}...pointcloud{} ...
> > how about (mis)using the DF3 format?  if one could put that data to use in
> > contexts other than an interior..
> ...
> I would still like to see a simple primitive that can be constructed simply and
> easily inside of SDL and is easy for a new user to grasp.

a macro to return (part of) a DF3 in an array[][][] should be doable.

if you decide to develop a 'pointcloud' type, have a look at the 'PointSet'
primitive in the VRML 2.0 spec which deals with that.
(I'll post an example of the "old friend" 'spiral.df3' converted in
p.t.scene-files)


> But as a workaround for the present - that's a pretty cool idea.
> But how do I [easily] index a single point in the df3?

I have never (really) looked at the POV-Ray source but would think that there
are places where you could utilise the existing read/write functions for your
own ends.


> Part of the experiment I wanted to run with that got even more interesting when
> I recently discovered someone's post on naming cameras or array elements (I lost
> the link, can't remember which, and it doesn't show up in any searches).
> Check out:
> http://wiki.povray.org/content/HowTo:Use_conditional_structures
> and see "Using #switch with text values"
> Then maybe we could name corners and edges and face centers and object centers
> and not worry about keeping track of anything.
> "I want the endpoint of this cylinder/cone arrow to be at the face of CubeA."
> Done.  Because it _should_ be _that_ easy.

write a pre-processor which translates "I want ..." to assorted primitives and
outputs scene code?  :-)


regards, jr.

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