"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote...
>   You complain that vnormalize(<0,0,0>) returns an error, yet you don't
> complain that 1/0 returns an error.
>   However, they are practically the same thing (the vnormalize also
performs
> a division by 0, as it divides each component with the length of the
vector,
> which is 0).

There's a fundamental difference between vnormalize(<0,0,0>) and 1/0:
backwards compatibility.  :-)  That is the crux of this issue, in my
opinion.  If we were writing a new raytracer or even writing a new scene
description language (SDL), sticking to the strict, pure rules of math would
be perfectly legitimate, and probably desired.  But we are neither writing a
new raytracer nor creating a new SDL.

-Nathan

Post a reply to this message