On Wed, 01 Sep 1999 07:56:43 -0700, Ken wrote:

>There is nothing wrong with the portable way per se (Ah peotry). I have
>however have become inspired by Chris Young's proposal to incorporate
>patches into the official version and if people rely on only the portable
>coding methods he may never get an itch to add similar patterns in the
>future. For that matter are there not a handful of custom patterns in
>the SP simply because they tickled someones fancy ?

The only pigment mods I can think of in the SP are the new crackle stuff 
(because they tickled my fancy, specifically, and couldn't be done any other 
way) and the function-based pigments from the isosurface patch.  It's an 
area that hasn't really been explored to the extent that it probably should
be.  Again, let me be the first to say that I have nothing against patches 
in general, and I'll even incorporate this patch into the superpatch if the 
author so desires. I just like to provide an alternative where possible for 
those people who, like the previously-unenlightened Ken, refuse to use or 
just simply can't use custom patches.  Besides, writing that kind of ugly
POV script is actually FUN.

Actually, there is a difference between both of the POV-script-only 
solutions and the patch solution, which is probably important to most
people.  When used with arbitrary pigments, the POV-script-only versions
repeat the same part of the pigment over and over.  In the case of my
hextiles and triangle versions, they also have reflective symmetry in 
odd places.  I assume the patch versions do not.

>Again on my little soap box if you at least
>posted the code for these unique patterns that you develope in one of the
>scene-files groups with an appropriate header you would probably reach a
>greater number of users with them. Buried in a reply to a thread like this
>few will ever be able to find your code again even with a good search routine.

True.  I should probably do that.  Usually, I put these little gems on
Twyst's macroscope if there's a positive response to them, but I must admit 
that I haven't done that with the hex tiles pattern either.  Maybe I'll 
polish up my collection of patterns (stars, hextiles, triangles, square 
tiles, and the unwritten-but-obvious triangle tiles) and put them online 
somewhere.  I suspect if I did that before releasing the next superpatch, 
though, I'd probably be lynched for wasting that valuable spare time. :)

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