"Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> ...if you don't see it you never looked into the POV-Ray source
> code nor the concept of these directives.

If a language has an explicit pre-processing stage, then there is something
wrong with the language itself. My point is that POV-Ray must not expose
that to the user -- and hopefully get rid of such internal subdivision as
well.

Thorsten, should I reply then that if you fail to see that, then you have
never had any experience with language design and implementation? I think
that I shouldn't -- nor should you use the "arguments" like those you came
up with... I completely agree with those who say that POV-Ray has marvelous
community, which actually represent part of the joy for those using
POV-Ray -- let's keep good spirit, OK?

As to my POV-Ray background... well, I made the first custom version of
POV-Ray back in 1996, and made it publicly available in 1997. It was
available at the CompuServe's GO POVRAY forum, library section 17; it is
still available at ftp://ftp.ru.com/pub/gamos/povpro/. Since then, I've made
several more versions, mostly dealing with animation, for my personal use.
BTW, one of the features added to the public version was the ability to
examine internal representation of scenes, since that (coupled with overall
language structure) was always of interest to me... You may want to read
ftp://ftp.ru.com/pub/gamos/povpro/povpro.txt go get a better idea of that.

Of course, my input into the official POV-Ray development is not only
incomparable, but is neglectable compared to yours. I would like to assure
you that I really think so -- I am aware of what you are responsible for.
All I did for the *official* POV-Ray is fixed two bugs in compressed BMP
reader, improved portability of the utility word/dword reading routines,
proposed portability enhancements to the Targa reading code... plus probably
sparkled interest in Intel's Proton compiler -- the thing is that I used its
preview version, issued by Intel at one of their seminars, and that
contributed significantly to the overall performance.

So, at large, my proposal is this -- lets respect each other and exchange
real arguments. I would be happy to discuss everything with you, or anybody
else, then.

Regads,
Vadim.

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