Le Forgeron <jgr### [at] freelocalhost> wrote:
> Which features are you lacking ?

  Some things are impossible to do currently. For instance, you can't
read a file with some unspecified format. For example, you can't code
a 3DS or DXF import macro with the SDL because you can't read such
files with the current SDL. In fact, you can't even write many file
types because you can't currently write the byte 0 to a file.
  Moreover, the SDL lacks tools for making data containers such as
doubly-linked lists, weighted trees, octrees, queues and so on (while
you can hack some of this into SDL arrays, it's usually quite inefficient,
slow and awkward, more or less a kludge).
  You can't take eg. a pre-defined texture and change the color of its
pigment. In general, you can't take any given item (something you can
#declare) and read/change its properties (for example, if you would
want to create an object using the same (unknown) texture as another
pre-declared object, you can't do that). Wouldn't it be nice if you
could do something like "if max_trace_level is less than 10, set it
to 10"?
  While most of these and other things could be kludged into the current
SDL, that's not really the point. Adding more and more bloat to the
current SDL with individual features is just not the way any longer.

  Another problem with the current SDL is that it's really slow.
As it currently is, however, it's next to impossible to be optimized
faster.
  I once made extactly the same ascii-mandelbrot-drawing routine in
perl and in pov-SDL (they both printed identical outputs). Perl is
also an interpreted scripting language, yet the perl version was more
than 13 times faster than the pov-SDL equivalent.
  Perl achieves its speed by byte-compiling the source and then
interpreting this bytecode. It would be quite hard to do the
same thing with the current SDL. While not impossible, a better
language designed for this purpose would be a cleaner solution.

> But remember, Povray is a 3D renderer, not a spreadsheet or an SQL 
> database.

  One of the strongest features of POV-Ray, which makes it different
from most other renderers, is its scripting language.
  However, I have always said that the strongest feature of POV-Ray is
also its weakest feature.

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

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