Ron Parker <par### [at] my-dejanewscom> wrote in article
<36505b72.0@news.povray.org>...
> ...  The real question is why image maps are on 
> the x-y plane and height fields on the x-z plane...
> 

'cause David Buck wrote planar image maps that way.  Slide projector
casting an image on a wall (since most of us thought of Y as up and put the
camera somewhere on the -Z axis).  Height fields are obviously on the
ground and stick up, so they are in the X/Z plane.  I never cared for the
fact that height fields were squashed into a 1x1x1 box, but since I didn't
do that code, I can't complain.  I wrote the TTF stuff, so I did it like I
wanted...

In general the objects are oriented they way they are because different
people wrote them at different times and had different ideas of how they
should go.

Xander

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