Ron Parker <par### [at] fwicom> wrote:
: Other suggestions have included creating a plugin interface that
: allows for compiled shaders in shared libraries, or in Java classes.
: Unfortunately, neither of those solutions scales to every platform
: POV supports (DOS has no Java, apparently, and definitely no shared
: library support.)

  Also shared libraries (which I suppose is compiled code) of one platform
will not work in another.

  The programmable shaders are an interesting feature, though. There still
are things that are impossible, or at least extremely hard and/or slow to
make with the current textures. The solution so far has been to add more
and more pattern types to the povray core. This is not a very good solution
in the long run.
  This effect can be seen in Moray. Since it lacks a scripting language,
each time you want to do something not directly supported you have to
make/download a plugin that does it. If you want to do something slightly
different you have to make a new plugin or modify an existing plugin.
This results in megabytes and more megabytes of plugins in a chaotic
jungle of little files. If this continues enough, Moray and all its plugins
will take Gigabytes of space with all the resource and maintenance problems.
  A powerful scripting language would take some tens of kilobytes of code
and no amount of plugins would be enough to achieve the same functionality.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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