On Wed, 22 Mar 2000 00:58:48 +1100, Nigel Stewart wrote:
>> Ummm... With the complete source code to the EXACT POV parser 
>> available,
>
>Which BTW is quite hard to maintain, and can't be incorporated
>into a commercial tool because of the POV license.  This means
>that only POV can read POV files.

The POV parser code isn't that hard to maintain.  Certainly no harder
than any other recursive-descent parser, perhaps a little easier 
than most due to the useful macros.

There's a very well-done POV-to-RIB converter out there somewhere, 
using an independently developed parser that happens to be freely 
available, I think under the LGPL.

>> My only comment is "just because it uses the modernized Greek alphabet,
>> doesn't make it 'human legible'! 
>
>It certainly isn't meant to be hand edited, which is an assumption
>that many pov users here have a hard time suspending.

That's because hand editing (or automatic generation, in some rare cases)
is the only way to make useful scene files.  All modelers suck, to one extent 
or another.

>> So. To convert the POV language to make it easier to use for people who
>> want to make POV tools, seems like a bit of wasted effort, since the
>> language parser is already available in source code.
>
>It's not.  It is restricted by licenses, and the interface to
>POV is not well defined.  I've not heard of anyone using the
>existing parser this way.

It is restricted by licenses, but the interface is indeed well-defined.  The
definition just happens to be in the form of C source code.  But you're right,
nobody is using the existing parser that way, because it's not allowed.  Go
reread Chris Young's comments on parsers and the future if you want to know
what the POV-Team thinks should be done about that.

-- 
These are my opinions.  I do NOT speak for the POV-Team.
The superpatch: http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/superpatch/
My other stuff: http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/traces.html

Post a reply to this message