On Fri, 09 Apr 1999 15:02:45 +0200, Mikael Carneholm
<sa9### [at] idautbhbse> wrote:


>This is exactly what I didn't mean: It should _not_ be totally re-written, just
>expanded with some new possibilities. It would be _optional_ to have attributes
>in an object, and it would be _optional_ to have methods for an object. You could
>still do like you're used to, like this:
>
>box{
>  <>,<>
>  texture{}
>}
>
>...and it would still render as a beautiful box, without first being declared as
>a "class" and instanced with object{}. But, I personally would like to have the
>option to declare it like this:
>
>#declare MyBox=box{
>  <>,<>
>  texture{}
>
>  attribute speed;
>  attribute direction;
>
>  #macro Move()
>    translate speed*direction
>  #end
>}
>
>What I miss most is being able to access the different parts of an object like
>the position, size, texture etc. If those were accessable via dot
>notation(.position, .size, .texture etc) things would light up a great deal.
>
>Once again, do not remove the backward-compability, just add some new features
>that expands the scripting language and that can be used _optionally_.

I don't object to object orientation in principle, although I despise
the long-winded dot notation.  I would indeed like to have access to
the properties of an object, preferably via additional keywords and
functions.  My big problem with this proposal is that, if you dump the
old syntax for an OO version, you lose too many people who can't
handle the transition.  If you keep both syntax styles the POV parser,
already getting unwieldy, will become such a PITA that the pace of
expansion and development will slow radically and things that do get
written will have multitudes of painful bugs.  You might as well just
hire Microsux to write the next version of POV! :)

Jerry Anning
clem "at" dhol "dot" com

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