> I think many of programing
> languages has some kind of parser directives.

To some degree, yes. Even such a "pure" language as Ada has that -- but only
to control speed vs. space tradeoffs, etc. In fact (although I strongly
dislike Ada...), I think that that is probably the right approach -- to
control parsing, but not alter the contents of source files...

> But that's the case: internall subdivision is required becouse all
#directives
> can appear in any place while scene description parts have clearly
described
> order. As I said I like it. I like tools which represents internal
behaviour
> becouse it gives more control (at least feeling of it).

I like such tools too, but I do not think that POV-Ray directives strictly
fall into this category (more on this later). There is such thing as "the
spirit of C" that current body of ANSI C committee pledged to keep (w/o much
success though :-( ), which means (among other things) and language
statements must be lightweight -- i.e. compiler must not generate heavy code
for simple-looking statements (examples of the opposite are exceptions, RTTI
etc. in C++). All in all, I like transparency in language semantics, too...
but, as we are going to have a chance, would like to improve the way it is
done in POV-Ray.

> Have you any experience how your improvements appear
> nowadays ? I mean are they considered in modern compilers ? Have you
> experimented with them on 3.1 or megapov sources?

No -- I have no clue as to how that works these days. I have switched to
Visual C++, plus I'm using GCC very heavily (a lot of work for ARM and
similar processors). I have not tried Proton for a long time now.

> Perhaps you can share some
> your ideas during beta-testing of 3.5 with two compilators.

That would require access to POV-Ray source code, that I don't have. So I'm
just waiting for the first release.

> I'm still really interested with "what was more elegant in PolyRay"
question.

PolyRay is not THAT ancient, indeed... You may want to get some old release
of Moray, get PolyRay plugin for it, set PolyRay as your current renderer,
and render some sample scene (you cannot just export the scene if your Moray
copy is not registered) -- you should be able to see the difference. As to
what exactly I see as more elegant/appropriate alternative to some pieces of
POV-Ray syntax, I will probably address in another message.

Regards,
Vadim.

Post a reply to this message