On Fri, 6 Nov 1998 13:11:00 +0100, Alessandro Coppo <a.c### [at] iolit> wrote:
>I am sorry to have started a kind of flame war. I was just upset by the fact
>that the possibility of wrapping a GREAT platform-INDIPENDENT ray tracing
>engine with equally GREAT platform-DEPENDENT shells was explicitly
>prohibited and that this decision really looks definitive.

No, it's not prohibited; you just have to do it in one of the prescribed
ways: either with a GUI-extension (which comes with its own, even more
restrictive, set of rules) or on the command line.  You may, of course, 
write a COM or DCOM object that invokes POV via the command line. You 
just can't add COM or DCOM interfaces directly to POV.

There's an alternative, of course.  From POVLEGAL:

   The user is granted the privilege to modify and compile the source 
   code for their own personal use in any fashion they see fit. What 
   you do with the software in your own home is your business.

and

   The user is encouraged to send enhancements and bug fixes to the 
   POV-Ray Team, but the team is in no way required to utilize these 
   enhancements or fixes.

So, you can write all the COM or DCOM interfaces you want, but you can't
distribute a custom version that incorporates them unless you can get 
them into an official version of POV.  Sounds reasonable to me.  Just
remember that you should send a short abstract of your work rather than
the complete source code when you approach the POV-Ray Team about getting
your enhancement added.

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