Chris Huff <chr### [at] maccom> wrote:

> In article <3a8145cd@news.povray.org>, Geoff Wedig 
> <wed### [at] darwinepbicwruedu> wrote:

>> I've often thought of constructing a set of objects for visual scenes 
>> in python, with some kind of reader that produced POV script. 

> Look at VPython: http://cil.andrew.cmu.edu/projects/visual/
> There is a way to export POV scenes.


>> Python is a very clean and simple language, but provides a level of 
>> power that POV-script just doesn't at this time.

> Hmph. I personally don't like what I have seen of it, but I've never had 
> to do anything in it, and a lot of people do seem to like it.
> I mainly don't like the way loops and things don't have a visible 
> closing, and the fact that it is sensitive to white space. And though it 
> is supposed to be object oriented, the code I've seen doesn't look very 
> object oriented to me.

The white space thing I tend to agree with.  It does take getting used to. 
On the other hand, it's actually pretty nice.  I've worked with programmers
who use "arbitrary" rules -- which is to say rules that change from one line
to the next -- to write their code.  Having a built in requirement to lay
your code out neatly isn't a bad thing at all.

As for OO, python was originally a scripting tool, like Perl (it actually
pre-dates perl, but only has recently gotten much recognition) Most of the
code out there is very script like for that reason.  However, it does have a
fairly powerful OO component, as tools like wxPython show.  It's a very
flexible language in that sense.

Geoff

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