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Tim Attwood wrote:
> 1) An optional "environment {}" command section where
> the command line options for a scene can be placed within
> the scene file (like the COBOL environment section).
> One objection I've read on this is that letting the
> environment (image size, animation options, etc.) be set
> from inside the scene file breaks compatibility with the old
> system, but it would be easy to get around that by just

The real objection seems to be that this would make it harder to
separate the front end and back end of the program, and make it harder
to do things like distributed renders.

> 3) Binary reading from files.

Hmm, could be useful for parsing oddball 3D formats in POV code.

At the very least, it would be nice to have more flexibility in reading
ASCII files. I would like to be able to parse files that are not
comma-delimited. :-) Any thoughts on supporting a scanf-style syntax?

> 4) Post processing of images. This could fall under something
> like a post_process{} section.  One thing that might be nice
> here would be the ability to directly produce animation files in a
> couple of formats.

That would be cool.

> 5) Allow the linking of external libraries, so that POV can
> access custom programming routines from various languages. 

I'm of two minds on this.

This would be *very* useful. If there's something that you can't do in
SDL, you can add it. :-)

On the other hand, it becomes possible to write malicious POV files. How
would you like to download a scene file and have it erase all your files
when you try to render it? Not good.

That's a tough one, because it's not a technological problem so much as
a social one. :-(

- --
William Tracy
afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu

You know you've been raytracing too long when someone shows you a
photograph of their new rough-slate kitchen floor and you say "nice
normals".
    -- Tom Melly
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